Project 123: Emergency Summit for Sourcing Temporary Accommodation
A new workstream bringing together London Councils and G15 members to explore potential solutions for the current temporary accommodation crisis in the Capital.
Figures released by London Councils in March 2023 showed that 1 in 50 Londoners are homeless, including 1 in 23 children. There are currently more than 61,000 households in temporary accommodation (TA) in London. That is roughly 170,000 people and equivalent to the population of an entire London borough. These are just some of the many hard-hitting statistics relating to the TA crisis in London.
On Tuesday 15 August L&Q, London Housing Directors, borough finance colleagues and the GLA came together as a first step to explore and identify how housing associations could work with boroughs to help deliver solutions to the TA crisis in the capital. During this interactive workshop, colleagues engaged with four possible scenarios for boosting the supply of TA in the capital to understand the challenges and identify the best opportunities.
The event had a great turn out and brought together lots of different ideas and perspectives. The next steps will involve boroughs doing some more scoping work, to understand how arrangements could work in practice across boroughs and L&Q engaging with other members of G15 to rally interest and explore the art of the possible on a wider scale.
G15 members collectively represent the largest provider of new affordable housing in London. They house around one in ten Londoners and build more than 10,000 new homes each year. The group is currently chaired by Fiona Fletcher-Smith, Chief Executive of L&Q, one of the largest housing associations in the country, managing more than 110,000 homes nationwide and housing more than 250,000 residents.
Fiona Fletcher-Smith, Chair of the G15 and Chief Executive of L&Q, said:
“While we are all painfully aware of the growing need for housing, we have also seen how increasingly difficult it has become to cater to this need. This means no one Housing Association nor the G15 can tackle this on their own. Instead, we need to work in partnership and I personally hope this event is the start of more joint work between local authorities and the G15 to solve London’s housing crisis.”