Out of area, out of mind: how thousands of homeless households went missing in the system

“You’ve got this displacement of people across boundaries, which is hugely disruptive to their lives and removes them from those key support networks, but it’s not only disruptive for families, it’s also disruptive for councils themselves,” says Maha Bryan, local authorities policy officer at the Shared Health Foundation, which campaigns on families in temporary accommodation.  

“Councils are then in a sticky situation where they’re then looking at their own housing situation in-area and they’re seeing that, well, there’s nowhere for these families to go, and so then they’re having to then move out of borough.” 

A Redbridge Council spokesperson says: “As one of London’s largest receiving authorities for out‑of‑borough placements, we are increasingly managing the impact of households being placed into the borough by councils from across the capital, often at short notice and without additional funding to support the increased demand on local services.” 

This places “considerable pressure” on housing services, schools, healthcare provision and community infrastructure, and “intensifies competition” for private rented and temporary accommodation, they add. 

Take the case of Enfield, in the north of the capital. In the first half of 2025, Enfield Council sent 334 households out of borough, but it received at least 470. Similarly, Newham Council sent 746 households out of borough, but received at least 600. Haringey Council sent 715 households out of borough and received upwards of 475. 

Tammy Hymas, cabinet member for housing at Haringey Council, says: “A severe shortage of affordable housing, rising rents, increasing homelessness demand and the availability of temporary accommodation mean that out-of-borough placements have now become a reality of how councils have to manage homelessness pressures.

“The only winners under this system are expensive nightly paid accommodation providers who are cashing in on the crisis.” 

“You’ve got this displacement of people across boundaries, which is hugely disruptive to their lives and removes them from those key support networks”

Janet Weekes is head of temporary accommodation and housing allocations at Slough Council, which receives hundreds of out-of-area placements from London.

Mostly these are from west London, which is fairly nearby, but Slough’s connection to the high-speed Elizabeth Line means it also receives placements from across the capital, as councils consider the transport links between a household’s placement and home borough. 

“The direct impact is not just in terms of housing that our temporary accommodation department now is not able to get access to, but the wider implications,” Ms Weekes explains.

“Families that are being placed in our borough may have a lot of children, so that means that they need to attend the schools within the borough. There may be vulnerable adults, who then need to access the care and support from adult social care, and then the wider implications of health provision.” 

Manchester Council receives the most out-of-area placements of any council outside of London. Most of these households are being moved into B&Bs, according to a spokesperson for the local authority, who points out that the city has “all but eradicated” its own placement of families in temporary accommodation.

“As such, out-of-borough placements received do not place a particular strain on the accommodation available to us. However, they do have an impact on council and other services, such as food banks,” they explain.

The data also allows us to map where the biggest flows are. The largest transfers are between London boroughs and their neighbours. And the biggest cross-region exchange was the 193 households sent from Wrexham in Wales across the border to neighbouring county Cheshire West and Chester.

Some of these even result in quasi-mutual exchanges: in the first half of 2025, Birmingham Council sent 168 households 20 miles down the road to Sandwell Council, while Sandwell sent 167 households to Birmingham.

Kiera’s story

Each of these hundreds of placements is a real family, displaced from their local connections and isolated. 

Kiera Wright* has been living in Barking and Dagenham for nine years, even though Westminster Council placed her there and it still has a homelessness duty to her. In that time, Ms Wright has lived in three properties in Barking and Dagenham, and her children have attended numerous schools.

Yet she has always been on a weekly tenancy, never knowing whether they can settle. 

Her eldest daughter is now a teenager and has special educational needs. Ms Wright says the moves and lack of stability delayed her daughter’s autism diagnosis and significantly affected her confidence, as she struggled to make friends at new schools. 

All Ms Wright wants is to properly settle somewhere, wherever that is, and for her children to have some normalcy. But without communication from either Westminster or Barking and Dagenham councils, she feels abandoned. 

“It leaves you in a place where you’re stuck, and you see everybody around you progressing and moving forward, and you’re stuck,” she says.

She hasn’t been allowed to transfer to the housing waiting list in Barking, so even though she desperately wants a permanent home, she also is terrified about the prospect of a housing offer back in her home borough of Westminster. 

“This is the problem with being housed out of area, is that now my kids have roots here. It’s so hard to know what’s best to do,” Ms Wright states. 

As well as asking local authorities about the out-of-area placements they made, we asked about the S208 notices they received.

An S208 notice refers to a duty under the Housing Act 1996 that any councils making out-of-area placements under any of the duties in the homelessness legislation should notify the host local authority as soon as possible. 

Our data shows that across a sample of almost 9,000 placements in the first six months of 2025, just 2,000 corresponded with an S208 notice recorded by the receiving local authority – a success rate of 23%.

30,000 missing homeless families 

Extrapolated out, this means that upwards of 30,000 households a year might be being placed out of area without the proper notification. These households may have significant health issues, special educational needs or other safeguarding concerns, such as a history of domestic abuse, for which they may need support from local services.

“We don’t always receive the Section 208, even though by law we have to be notified,” says Ms Weekes of Slough Council. “Or sometimes we only find out through another department, like adult social care, who say they’ve been contacted by a household who has been placed here by another local authority.” 

She asks: “You need to notify the host borough, but what are the penalties if that doesn’t happen?”

At the moment, nothing – although this is something that homelessness minister Ms McGovern has said she hopes to address, calling for “accountability” for councils failing to meet standards. 

This discrepancy is highly concerning, says Ms Bryan of the Shared Health Foundation.

“If local authorities don’t know that children or families are going to be within their area, then how can they commission correctly? How can they commission a right level of support from frontline services to be able to cope with the demands of higher numbers of people within their areas?” 

Looking at a local authority level, Redbridge says it has a record of only 574 S208 notices in the first half of 2025, but our FOI request shows that at least 1,266 households were sent to Redbridge in the same period. 

A Redbridge Council spokesperson says that these variances could be for a number of reasons, including delays in notifications being issued or received, inconsistencies in data recording between local authorities, incomplete address information and differences in reporting periods.

They add: “While these discrepancies do not necessarily mean households have not been placed, they highlight the need for greater consistency, transparency and accountability in the notification process.” 

Similarly, while at least 608 households were sent to Newham in the first half of 2025, the council says it has records for only 123 S208 notices. Newham Council did not provide any comment. 

In its FOI response, Sheffield Council wrote: “We don’t have S208 notices recorded. Anecdotally, it’s going to be none or next to none, as other [local authorities] don’t usually send them.”

Inside Housing’s data shows that upwards of 260 households were placed into Sheffield by other councils in 2024, and at least 97 in the first half of 2025.

“Inconsistencies between placement figures and recorded notifications are a known issue nationally due to differences in recording practices and system limitations,” says Ms Hymas of Haringey Council. “Work is ongoing to improve consistency, transparency and data quality in this area.” 

“If local authorities don’t know that children or families are going to be within their area, then how can they commission correctly?”

One sign of possible improvements in this area can be seen in Manchester. In the first half of 2025, Manchester City Council recorded 555 S208 notices, covering all of the reported placements there.

Almost all the placements into Manchester come from other boroughs in Greater Manchester, and Manchester Council says there is considerable work being done across the combined authority to improve the notification system. 

It is not possible to pinpoint whether S208 discrepancies are due to the sending or receiving local authority. But it is possible to pull out specific council-to-council relationships where there appears to be a high number of ‘missing’ S208 notifications. 

For example, even though 193 households were sent from Wrexham to Cheshire West and Chester, the English local authority says it had records for only 66 notifications from Wrexham in that time. 

A spokesperson for Cheshire West and Chester Council says that it is in “regular communication” with Wrexham Council and does receive notifications, but that these were not held in a reportable format for providing data.

They add: “Generally, we would welcome greater consistency in the use and recording of Section 208 notifications nationally, alongside clearer guidance to support local authorities in meeting their responsibilities.” 

While Birmingham and Sandwell each sent around 167 households to the other, Sandwell Council recorded 129 notifications from Birmingham, but Birmingham City Council recorded only 39 notifications in the other direction. 

A spokesperson for Sandwell Council says: “We don’t currently have any significant concerns, but it’s a matter we continue to keep under review.”

Redbridge did not report any recorded S208 notifications from Waltham Forest in the first half of 2025, even though Waltham Forest says it sent 444 households to the neighbouring borough in that period. 

A spokesperson for Waltham Forest said the local authority is part of a London Councils working group that is “looking at ways to improve communication between boroughs regarding placements and to standardise the Section 208 process in London”.

This working group has developed “the only regional key lines of enquiries framework in the country”, covering statutory compliance, safeguarding, inter-authority collaboration and data collection. 

“London boroughs have developed a shared regional approach to S208 notifications and to promoting best practice on out-of-borough placements,” says Joanne Drew, who is executive director of housing and regeneration at Enfield Council but speaking in her capacity as co-chair of the London Housing Directors’ Group. 

“We are the first area of the country to do this, and we will keep working together to drive improvements. This partnership work is vital for reducing miscommunication and negative impacts on boroughs, as well as ensuring better support for homeless Londoners.” 

Steps to improve out-of-area placements

The Better TA Alliance is made up of 20 organisations across London that work with people living in temporary accommodation. It has laid out some steps to improve out-of-area placements for households and local authorities: 

• Designated face-to-face contacts and communication between local authorities, with better and more consistent use of S208 notifications, particularly around continuing health and support needs
• Relevant professionals, as well as the household, must be involved in the assessment, the decision to offer out-of-area temporary accommodation and discussion on support needed to be put in place
• Training to help decision-makers display greater compassion for the individuals’ circumstances
• Applicants have a single point of contact to raise questions and issues
• Allow more time before moving people, offer a physical or virtual tour ahead of moving, and provide a moving pack that covers services in the new area and connection to networks for emotional support and advice
• Temporary accommodation to include WiFi and instruction manual for all appliances and services in the property
• Consider cash grants to help with buying uniforms, essentials and generally smoothing a sudden and challenging move away from the area where they were living

It is not just about sending the notifications, but also the quality of that information. This should include details of a household’s make-up, health and social care needs, and educational needs of any children. 

Liam Robinson, chair of the Inclusive Growth Committee at the Local Government Association, says a “national notification system is needed” for S208 notifications.

London Councils’ co-chair Ms Drew says the capital’s local authorities are focused on “pan-London collaboration”. 

“We all want to see better communication and information-sharing between boroughs to manage these placements fairly and effectively,” she adds.

“Boroughs can improve the way we manage this crisis, but it’s not solely within our power to end it. Ultimately, more policy action is needed at a national level to boost supply of affordable housing and reduce the unsustainable number of households needing temporary accommodation.” 

But as the demand for temporary accommodation continues, and with it out-of-area placements, it is clear that more needs to be done to capture a full picture of the scale of out-of-area placements, and ensure that local authorities are fully equipped to support the households affected. 

*Name has been changed

Other articles by Katharine Swindells on homelessness and temporary accommodation

Temporary accommodation is even worse for neurodivergent children, but councils can do better
No one knows how many children in temporary accommodation are neurodivergent and have additional needs, but it is likely to be tens of thousands. Katharine Swindells talks to families who are struggling to cope, and considers whether councils should be taking a different approach.

Domestic homicide: what can housing learn when the worst happens?
Domestic homicide reviews, which examine cases of murder and suicide that involved domestic abuse, contain vital learning for social landlords. Inside Housing analysed every review since 2017 that contain recommendations for the sector – 76 in total – to pull out the crucial lessons for housing teams. Katharine Swindells reports.

How many toddlers and babies are living in temporary accommodation in the UK?
The government does not publish data on the numbers of young children in temporary accommodation, despite evidence that it has highly damaging impacts on child development and well-being. This live data dashboard uses Freedom of Information requests to track the numbers of under-fives living in temporary accommodation and B&Bs. Katharine Swindells reports

Lessons from a London council that drastically reduced the number of children housed in B&Bs
Inside Housing’s data dashboard shows that Greenwich reduced the number of young children staying in B&Bs by over 90% between September and December 2024. Katharine Swindells speaks to the local authority to find out how it did it

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