There are 145,800 children who are homeless and in temporary accommodation, new government figures have shown.
The stark figure is the highest on record and up 15% in a year.
Overall, 112,660 households were homeless and living in temporary accommodation at the end of 2023 – another record high.
The chief executive of Shelter, Polly Neate, urged the Government not to ‘stand idly by while a generation of children have their lives blighted by homelessness’.
The District Councils' Network (DCN) warned that soaring temporary accommodation costs were ‘threatening the financial sustainability of many well-run councils’.
DCN chairman Sam Chapman-Allen said that while district councils wanted to do more to prevent homelessness, rather than spending huge sums responding to the crisis, few councils could hope to build enough housing on current budgets.
In another record high, 25,910 households were threatened with homelessness because of a section 21 ‘no-fault’ eviction in 2023.
The figures come after MPs signed off an indefinite delay to the long-awaited ban on section 21 evictions as part of the Renters (Reform) Bill.
Describing the Government's approach as 'maddening', the campaign manager of the Renters’ Reform Coalition, Tom Darling, said the Bill had been ‘gutted of key provisions by a group of pro-landlord MPs’.
He said: ‘To start putting some of these harrowing homelessness statistics into reverse, the Bill needs major surgery in the Lords.’
