New social homes and targeted supports help Greenwich make progress
Greenwich Borough Council has reduced its use of hotels and bed and breakfasts for temporary accommodation by 84% over a year and a half.
Figures for March 2025, showed that the number of households in hotels had dropped to 44, down from the 269 recorded in 18 months before in September 2023.
The council said it has made further progress in the subsequent period, with just three families in hotel temporary accommodation as of 30 April. Additionally, the latest figures show that there are just three families currently in hotel temporary accommodation as of the 30 April.
In total, roughly 2,000 homeless households are in some form of temporary accommodation in Greenwich. The borough has 26,000 people on its housing register, with only around 1,000 likely to be rehoused each year.
The council said its reduced reliance on hotels and B&Bs has reduced the pressure on the council’s finances by around £5.88m.
It was spending £29,500 per night on hotels in autumn 2023, which had been brought down to around £3,600 a night in March 2025.
Greenwich said it addressed the issue by dramatically speeding up the administration of homelessness assessments, providing targeted support to help older people and council tenants living in temporary accommodation to move into settled homes, and providing incentives to help private sector tenants at risk of homelessness retain their tenancies.
In the face of rising homelessness and tight finances, local authorities across the country have relied increasingly on hotels and B&Bs to house people in need.
But costs can be high for councils and conditions can be cramped and impractical for the people living in them.
“Living in a hotel room can have a real impact on families’ well-being during an already vulnerable time in their lives,” said Pat Slattery, cabinet member for housing management, neighbourhoods and homelessness.
“It is also very expensive for the council. At our peak in 2023, we were one of the local authorities in London with the highest reliance on this type of accommodation and I am so proud that this innovative new joint working has allowed us, in a short space of time, to drive down our use of hotels to virtually nothing”.
The number of hotel rooms needed for temporary accommodation in Greenwich increased from around 5 rooms a night to 269 in the year from September 2022 to the same month in 2023.
>> See also: South London council bucks trend and reduces temporary accommodation use
The local authority also used half of the 133 newly acquired social homes at Sandy Hill Road in Woolwich and Greenwich Millennium Village, along with a proportion of existing homes, to provide 100 direct offers for the people who had spent the longest time in temporary accommodation.
An additional 100 of the council’s own homes were used as in-borough temporary accommodation.
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