This Government Must Make Private Rent More Affordable. Here’s How They Can Do It

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The government can make our country affordable again for everyone. Ben Cooper, research manager at Fabian Housing Centre, writes in the Big Issue.

Millions of people are in a daily struggle to afford the roof over their head. Around 2.6 million people are pushed into poverty because their housing costs are so high. Housing is both a major monthly expense and a source of great insecurity, feeding a sense that this country is broken. With the government’s focus on the cost of living, ministers cannot afford to ignore this.

In recent months, the government has made some welcome progress on housing policy. Planning reform will help address the housing shortages that led to rapid price increases. A £250 cap on annual ground rents will reduce leaseholders’ bills. Government investment will deliver thousands more social homes each year, which will be genuinely affordable for people to rent. And the Renters’ Rights Act will limit rent increases to once a year, cut rent demanded in advance, and ban bidding wars. These are major successes that will improve many people’s lives.

But these policies must mark only the beginning of a more comprehensive set of measures to cut housing costs. By tackling this through comprehensive action, the government can make our country affordable again for everyone. Cutting costs must be embedded into every policy – so the 1.5m new homes target focus on delivering enough good quality, affordable homes to buy or rent, not just building lots of units that are expensive to buy and costly to run. And it is about the wider community that homes sit within. Well-designed places can ensure people have access to affordable services, like public transport.

The immediate priority is the private rented sector. Around one in five households rent privately. And, in December 2025, the average monthly rent in England was over £1,400 – up 4 per cent on a year earlier. Compared to a decade earlier, private rents have increased by £440 a month. This is no longer just a London problem either. The northeast and northwest saw the largest rent increases in 2025, both in percentage and cash amounts. Places like Bristol, Leeds and Trafford are as unaffordable as parts of London for the average private renter.

The recently passed Renters Rights’ Act is a really welcome piece of legislation that will provide security for private tenants, but it will do little to make renting more affordable. And without further reforms, landlords could try to push the costs of the required home improvements onto tenants. Landlords must be prevented from hiking up rents over the next few years to pay for their historic failure to invest in their properties.

This is why the Fabian Housing Centre is looking for solutions to improve the affordability of the private rented sector, particularly for those on the lowest incomes. We are exploring how to make local rents transparent, so tenants know if they are getting a good deal or not. There must also be better ways for renters to challenge unacceptable increases in practice, rather than getting bogged down in an overburdened legal system. It could be made easier for landlords to rent out to those who need Local Housing Allowance. Finally, we need a serious and evidence-based conversation about how to limit rent increases, perhaps by inflation or wage increases, without impacting on the supply of private rented homes.

The government is rightly prioritising both housing and the cost of living. These are urgent challenges that affect people every day. And while the challenge to improve housing affordability is significant. And while the challenge is significant, governments have successfully taken on big housing issues before. Ministers should be inspired by their Labour predecessors’ success in sweeping away slums and improving over a million social homes in the first decade of this century. This government could have a similar such an impressive and life changing legacy, repairing the belief that our country works again for ordinary people. But if it wants to show progress by the next election, work will need to start now.

Number Of Homeless Refugees In England Soars

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The number of refugee households who are homeless or at risk of homelessness increased by more than 15,000 in four years, reports the BBC.

There has been a five-fold increase in the number of refugee households who are homeless or at risk of homelessness in the last four years, the BBC has found. Government data for England showed a rise from 3,560 in 2021/22, to 19,310 in 2024/25. Charities said the increase was a “direct result” of government policy, and blamed the 28-day period newly-recognised refugees are given to move out of Home Office accommodation – including hotels – as well as faster processing of claims by asylum seekers. The government said it was “committed” to helping refugees transition from asylum housing to their own accommodation and was working with local authorities “to mitigate the risk of homelessness”.

It comes as successive governments have struggled to get a grip on the UK’s overwhelmed asylum system, with a huge backlog of people waiting for decisions on claims and appeals. Processing had been slow and, at one point put on pause entirely, but Labour wants to speed up decisions – resulting in more people being granted refugee status and looking for somewhere to live. One charity supporting homeless refugees said it was mostly seeing young women under the age of 30 asking for help. Yusra, who arrived in the UK on a small boat after fleeing war in Sudan, is among them. The 26-year-old said her entire family was killed before she arrived in the UK.

She was placed in a government-funded asylum hotel for about five months but said, since she was granted refugee status in late August, she had been sleeping in a tent on the streets of Greater Manchester. “Sometimes drunk people come and try to open the tent and I start screaming,” Yusra said. “I can’t sleep until the morning.” In the days before she had to leave her Home Office accommodation, Yusra contacted her local council. However, as a single adult without children, she ranked as low priority for social housing. Yusra told the BBC she fled Sudan for a better life but now regretted coming to the UK, saying life has been “very difficult” since becoming homeless. She is one of many refugees receiving support from the Stockport Race Equality Partnership.

Once an asylum seeker is given refugee status they have 28 days to move out of government-funded accommodation – usually a house in multiple occupation (HMO) or a hotel – and find their own housing. At the same time, they must find work or, if necessary, apply for universal credit. The government has said it usually takes about 35 days to receive an initial universal credit payment. As a result, charities have said many refugees are not able to secure housing or benefits before their asylum support ends.

Jasmine Basran, Head of Policy & Campaigns for national homelessness charity Crisis, said 28 days was not enough time for refugees to sort everything. She said the charity was seeing the highest rise in homelessness among refugees and the true number without a home was likely to be even higher, as government data only counts those who notify their local authority.

According to the latest figures, London and the North West – including Manchester and Liverpool – have the highest proportion of refugees who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. The west London borough of Hillingdon saw the sharpest increase – 2,098 homeless households in the area were refugees in 2024/25, up from 71 in 2021/22.

Refugees must seek support from an area they have a local connection to, which is often where their asylum accommodation is. Hillingdon houses a higher number of asylum seekers due to its proximity to Heathrow Airport. In December, the National Audit Office released a damning report into the asylum system, finding a succession of “short-term, reactive” government policies had moved problems elsewhere, increasing levels of homelessness. Its criticisms highlighted changes to the 28-day move-on period, a drive to clear inherited asylum backlogs shifting pressure onto appeals, and a shortage of judges creating court backlogs.

Last year, the Labour government ran a pilot increasing the 28-day period for people granted asylum to 56 days, but this ended early, in September, when it reverted back to 28 days.  In 2023, for some refugees, that period shrunk to seven days after the government briefly changed how the move-on period was calculated. The policy was reversed, with the British Red Cross saying it had led to “devastating levels of destitution”. The 56 day move-on period pilot was, however, extended for those deemed vulnerable – including pregnant women, families with children and disabled people. It was due to end in January 2026, but is understood to still be in place.

It comes as the latest Home Office figures suggest 110,000 people claimed asylum in the year ending September 2025 – a 13% increase on the previous year. As of September last year, there were 108,085 people in asylum accommodation, with more than 36,000 in hotels and the majority in shared housing, such as HMOs. Asylum accommodation contracts have cost the government billions of pounds. The government has pledged to clear the backlog of asylum seekers waiting for their claim to be decided, to close “every asylum hotel” and cut asylum costs, adding that “more suitable” sites were being brought forward to “ease pressure on communities”.

But Jacqui Broadhead, director of the Global Exchange on Migration and Diversity at the University of Oxford, said a “long-term reimagining” of asylum policies may be required. She suggested one solution was to invest in more temporary accommodation instead of paying private providers to oversee asylum accommodation sites such as hotels. After initially being used to help the asylum backlog, she said it could aid the housing shortage more generally. She highlighted the importance of co-ordination between local authorities and the Home Office, adding that increased and faster decision-making on asylum claims can “put very high levels of pressure” on housing services that are already “extremely stretched”.

Homeless Kids To Get Free School Bus Passes

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Following a six-month campaign, backed by charities, eight MPs – and most importantly Manchester Evening News readers who signed our petition – the mayor has announced a massive policy change.

Andy Burnham has committed to giving 8,000 homeless children in temporary accommodation free school travel in massive win following a Manchester Evening News campaign. Following six months of campaigning, the mayor has announced his office will pay for free bus travel to and from school for children placed in temporary accommodation from later this year – a huge step forward for the lives of Greater Manchester’s 8,000 children in temporary housing. Under current government transport rules, youngsters are only eligible for free travel if they live more than two miles from class (three miles for over-8s) and no ‘suitable school’ is nearer. But it’s almost impossible to be further than two miles from a school in the city. That presents homeless families in desperate circumstances a horrible choice: Pay for buses they didn’t need to before, or move a child away from a support network when they need it most.

It’s a choice schools hit out at. It’s a choice the Manchester Evening News believes homeless families shouldn’t need to consider. Now, it’s a choice they don’t have to make. After three major charities, eight Greater Manchester MPs, and hundreds of residents got behind the initiative, Burnham confirmed on Thursday (February 5) free Bee Network bus travel to-and-from school will be available for children from later this year. He said: “I commend the Manchester Evening News for highlighting the issue and am glad we can do something about it. Temporary accommodation is a symptom of wider housing and inequality issues up and down the country. It’s amongst the most ambitious in the UK and we are working hard to reduce homelessness, with better support, early intervention and, critically, more high-quality, affordable homes. Part of that is reducing the need for families to be in temporary accommodation.”

He added: “Using our locally-controlled Bee Network buses to support families when they need it most is the right thing to do. A move into temporary accommodation is often a massive upheaval for families and can be a worrying time. With this measure, the cost of travel to school will be one less thing for families to worry about. It will mean parents and carers don’t have to choose between an extra demand on their household budget and keeping their children with friends and teachers they know and trust.”

Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) has confirmed money is set aside for the scheme in its budget that is ready to be approved next week. Should it get the green light as expected, TfGM said it will work with the region’s 10 councils to finalise details on eligibility and implement it ‘later this year’. While an exact date for implementation has not been given, if the programme is in place for the new academic year, it will mean the campaign has gone from dream to reality in a year. After the Manchester Evening News learned schools were frustrated with the current transport rules, with some even in a bizarre situation where they would use grant funding from the Greater Manchester Mayor’s Charity to buy Bee Network bus passes for their homeless children, we decided to step in.

Formally launching the campaign and petition on August 10, high-profile Salford MP Rebecca Long-Bailey came out in support of the move a day later, saying: “These children need stability. They need access to their school, their teachers, their friends. A free bus pass is a small step that would make a big difference.” By the end of that week, momentum began to build. Hundreds of people signed our petition, three charities — Wood Street Mission, Shared Health, and Resolve Poverty — supported the move, as did another MP, Christian Wakeford. Pressure really ramped up by the August bank holiday weekend, as more MPs followed suit, namely Yasmin Qreshi, Afzal Khan, Lisa Smart and Tom Morrison, who revealed he’d been homeless himself as a child.

Graham Stringer echoed the calls on August 26, so by the time the mayor made his first public appearance of the autumn, he couldn’t ignore the issue. “These are kids, who I guess will feel a bit forgotten,” Burnham said on September 1. “What I can say today is we’re going to look carefully at it to see if we can do it. But I’m personally sympathetic to what [the M.E.N. is] saying. I think the vast majority of people in Greater Manchester would be as well.” While the mayor took away the proposals, new data emerged in October suggesting 5,397 children in temporary accommodation in Greater Manchester could benefit from reform. Updated estimates later revised this to around 8,000.

Another MP, Debbie Abrahams, came out in support of the move following the autumn reshuffle, being the eighth to do so in early December. Around the same time, the mayor revealed for the first time the plans were being seriously examined. He said on December 3: “What might open the door is we are moving to a more interventionist space as a combined authority when we signed off using 400 empty properties to reduce the bill in temporary accommodation. We are looking at all of it. I am sympathetic.” In late January, more support came when the Green Party proposed Manchester council formally back the campaign, and when ruling Labour councillors got behind it, they agreed to write directly to the mayor urging him to act.

Hours after the vote, Burnham said the ‘case was clear’ change was needed, sparking an anxious few days’ wait to see if money would be set aside in the new budget. On Thursday (February 5), Greater Manchester got its answer: There is. That’s a victory for the council, three charities, eight MPs, and hundreds of Manchester Evening News readers. But most importantly, it’s a win for 8,000 children.

Homelessness In Blackpool Double England Average

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The end of a private rented sector tenancy is currently the leading cause of homelessness in England, reports the BBC.

Blackpool continues to deal with a homelessness issue well over twice the average in England, a new report has said. Figures from Blackpool Council show applications from homeless people seeking help in 2024/25 are at nearly 18 per 100,000 people, compared to seven per 100,000 for England as a whole.

The town draws people from out-of-town due to its abundance of low cost rooms, as many small hotels and B&Bs have become houses of multiple occupation. The end of a private rented sector tenancy is currently the leading cause of homelessness in England but in Blackpool that situation is doubled, with 58% citing this as the main reason in 2024/5 compared to the average in England of just 39%. Because of the complex needs of many tenants, they sometimes lose their accommodation and present as homeless, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

A report for the council’s Tourism, Economy and Communities Scrutiny Committee said: “This data shows that Blackpool is still dealing with significantly more pressure than national averages. Nationally homeless presentations are starting to stabilise and decline. Presentations are still rising in Blackpool, but this is slowing. Homeless prevention performance dropped in 23/24 due to the significant built-up pressure in this system but has improved by 6% in the last year. This shows a deliberate and conscious shift back to prevention and away from crisis, but remains incredibly challenging to maintain with emergency presentation increasing.”

On 31 March 2025, Blackpool had 100 people in temporary accommodation, of which 40 were in a B&B, compared to 110 and 48 respectively at the end of March 22/23. Blackpool has been awarded £2.86m in government funding to support work to prevent and reduce the harm associated with homelessness for the 2025/26 financial year.

The authority said nine people were likely to sleep rough on any one night, and there are usually about 16-20 different individuals found to be rough sleeping over the course of a month. About half of those are new to Blackpool. The council has made extra beds available, which can be accessed flexibly throughout the winter, and works are progressing on 25 new sheltered apartments due to open in the summer, a spokesman said.

Sefton Council Leader Welcomes Government’s Announcement Of £300k Funding For Social Homes

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Council leader Cllr Marion Atkinson has welcomed the announcement by the Government of new funding and flexibilities that will provide thousands more families in the UK with quality social homes, reports MySefton News.

Cllr Atkinson said: “We have said repeatedly that individuals and families need safe, secure homes to thrive, so I am glad to see the Government announce these new measures to increase construction of new homes and reduce the numbers of families and children in temporary accommodation and on housing waiting lists. In Sefton, we have shown our commitment to this through a number of measures.”

“In the coming months, we will be getting the keys to 18 newly built apartments at Buckley Hill in Netherton, which will be Sefton’s first new Council housing since 2006. The brand-new homes will be let to local people through the Property Pool Plus housing allocations scheme, which means that those in housing need and with a connection to the local area will be given priority. And just recently, we announced our new Sefton 2030 partnership with The Sovini Group to build 1,000 new, social and affordable homes for local people, by 2030.”

Sefton Council is identifying land it owns such as former schools and community sites, that can be pooled with The Sovini Group’s development pipeline. If approved, construction will start on 400 homes across sites in Bootle, Netherton, Southport, Seaforth, and Formby. This will be alongside Sovini’s plans to deliver 600 additional homes by 2030 through its own developments.

Cllr Atkinson added: “Sefton Council has been successful in securing grant funding through the Government’s Council Housebuilding Support Fund. “The Fund is to support councils in the delivery of new social and affordable housing, and we are using it to pay for a range of work to help get our new partnership with The Sovini Group underway as soon as possible.”

Rough Sleeping In London Hits New Record High

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A total of 4,841 people were counted as sleeping rough in London in the three months before Christmas – that’s higher than any other quarterly total on record, reports the Big Issue.

The number of rough sleepers spotted on London’s streets reached a record-high before Christmas, new official figures show. The Combined Homelessness and Information Network (Chain) statistics showed 4,841 people were recorded sleeping rough between October and December last year. That’s a 5% increase on the same period in 2024 and 3% higher than the previous quarter when frontline homelessness workers spotted 4,711 people on the street.

The rising number of people sleeping rough has been driven by both new people sleeping rough in the English capital and going on to stay there over a longer period. A total of 2,250 people were recorded as sleeping rough for the first time over the three-month period, up 6% year-on-year, with 73% spending just one night on the streets. But 830 people have been deemed as living on the streets long-term, rising 9% since July and September last year and 18% higher than the same period in 2024. The Labour government launched its own homelessness strategy in December, promising to halve rough sleeping nationally by 2029.

Matt Downie, chief executive at Crisis, said the number of people living on the streets is now a “normalised emergency”. “The fact that rough sleeping in London is once again at record highs is simply shameful. This is now a normalised emergency – years of rising homelessness has desensitised us to the stark reality that thousands of people have nowhere safe to stay and have to sleep on the streets,” said Downie. “Over the years, a failure to invest in support services and to build new social homes at anywhere close to the scale required has gotten us to this point. Although the Westminster government has pledged to halve the number of people sleeping rough long-term, with record numbers of people living on the streets it’s crucial that they address the reasons driving people there in the first place.”

Labour’s plan to reduce homelessness will set targets to prevent the number of people becoming homeless after leaving prisons, hospitals and other public institutions. The latest Chain statistics showed a 7% rise in the number of ex-prisoners spotted on the streets through October to December last year, rising from 958 people in the same period in 2024 to 1,025 people. The number of people with an armed forces history on the street also rose 16% year-on-year from 96 people to 112. The statistics also showed a 40% increase in the number of new people sleeping rough who have left hostels or supported housing.

John Glenton, chief care and support officer at Riverside, said: “It is deeply concerning that more people could end up homeless or sleeping rough because of the financial crisis in the supported housing sector.” There was also a 6% increase in the number of care leavers sleeping rough. Frontline workers spotted 268 people with care experience – 6% higher than the 268 counted in 2024. Dr Lisa Doyle, head of policy and public affairs at Centrepoint, said: “Care leavers are some of the most vulnerable people in London and it’s shocking they are continuing to slip through the net, rather than getting the support they need and are entitled to.”

However, the number of young people aged 25 and under sleeping on the capital’s streets has fallen by 4%, down to 396 people from 414 a year earlier. But Daniel Dumoulin, director of development at Depaul UK, said the charity’s polling found sky-high rents and cost of living in London has nearly one in two young people (47%) worried about becoming homeless in the next year. Dumoulin said: “We know that young people are among the most vulnerable caught in this crisis, and the scale of the problem facing young Londoners is deeply concerning.”

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has pledged to end rough sleeping in London and told Big Issue last year that he didn’t expect to see falling numbers on the street until 2026. Last May he laid out his plan of action to turn things around, including refurbishing up to 500 new empty homes, a new Ending Homelessness Hub and a dedicated rough sleeping prevention phone line.

But for Khan and the Labour government, the new year must bring progress to reduce the number of people living on the streets or without a stable home.

“2026 must be the year we turn the corner on shameful levels of rough sleeping,” said Fiona Colley, director of social change at Homeless Link, the national membership body for frontline homelessness services. “London’s ambitious rough sleeping plan of action is now up and running, and the recently launched national plan to end homelessness commits the Westminster government to halving long-term rough sleeping by the end of the parliament. We now need a concerted effort at a national and local level to deliver both immediate and long-term solutions to totally unacceptable levels of homelessness. It’s time to move from strategy to delivery.”

Millionaire Merseyside GP Behind Asylum Seeker Hotels

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More than 100 people were threatened with eviction from their homes to make way for asylum seekers after companies linked to a prominent GP started running migrant hotels, reports the BBC.

Firms connected to Dr Faisal Maassarani became landlords of Serco hotels in 2022 when asylum applications were almost at a 20-year high. But soon after a hotel in Seel Street in Liverpool owned by one of the firms was found to be unsuitable, people in one of their Liverpool housing complexes were told they had to move out over “urgent” fire safety issues, unaware that 116 asylum seekers had seemingly been lined up to replace them almost immediately.

Maassarani, whose involvement with one of the firms was hidden behind a complex structure of companies and trusts registered in the Isle of Man, said he had no part in the day-to-day running of the buildings and did not authorise any communication with tenants. Maassarani operates several GP surgeries in Knowsley and Sefton and in 2009 set up the social isolation charity Care Merseyside. Between 2021 and 2022, a company he had founded, Schloss Roxburghe Holdings, acquired about £5m of freeholds on buildings that were originally owned by property developer Elliot Lawless before his companies went into administration.

In August 2022, when some of Maassarani’s business associates bought the Waverley Hotel in Whitehaven in Cumbria, Serco moved asylum seekers into it within a week. In November, one of Maassarani’s companies then spent £3.5m buying the King’s Gap hotel in Hoylake, which had been running as asylum seeker accommodation since 2020. At the same time, asylum seekers were moved into the Seel Street hotel as the firms’ relationships with Serco and the Home Office expanded. And the BBC’s investigations suggest it was the use of that hotel that directly led to dozens of people almost losing their homes in an alleged illegal eviction attempt.

A tenant of Parliament Place in Liverpool told the BBC he came home from work in March 2023 to find a letter from Schloss Roxburghe Holdings (SRH). Andrew Lewis said he was left in “disbelief” at what the letter said. The letter told tenants they needed to move out because the building required urgent fire safety works. Lewis, 47, said: “People were afraid, panicking… and didn’t want to be evicted.” The IT worker added: “They put it vague enough to make us assume we could come back in again. It wasn’t until someone emailed the management company and said what happens after this four-week period that they said they were going to terminate our leases. And that’s when we thought, we’re not standing for this.”

The tenants did not know about plans to move asylum seekers into their homes, nor that the plan had been under discussion for up to three months. Those the BBC has spoken to also said they did not know that the buy-to-let landlords who owned the flats they lived in had been directly approached by an “agent” of SRH promoting the asylum deal to them. In February 2023, an email was sent to some of the private landlords of flats in the building telling them a deal with “the United Kingdom Home Office” would give them a guaranteed £435 a month per flat, potentially for up to seven years. The email said the Home Office had “undertaken a full survey of the building” in December 2022, and had then issued a “heads of terms” for a contract to use it from March 1.

The BBC understands the unsigned and undated “heads of terms” was actually a draft proposal, and that no agreement had been made. But at the time, the Home Office and Serco were facing pressure from Liverpool City Council about the use of the SRH-owned Seel Street hotel as asylum accommodation because its location in the middle of the city centre’s nightlife district made it unsuitable. The timing suggests it was likely it was these asylum seekers that were destined to move into Parliament Place. Liverpool City Council said it had visited the building “informally” in February 2023 “to check room sizes for intended occupancy” and whether the fire alarm system was suitable. It is understood that not all of the building’s private landlords were told about the plan, and that when some were, they objected to it.

The tenants were then contacted directly by letter by SRH and told they had to move out for fire safety works to take place. Liverpool City Council said it had never suggested anyone needed to move out of the building. Lewis, whose own landlord was not aware of the move, said he “100% believed” that the fire safety claims were a ruse to clear the building. SRH shelved the asylum seeker plan, and was reported in the Liverpool Echo at the time to have withdrawn from the plan when it became clear the “upheaval to tenants was too great”. The tenants did not have to leave, and, to their knowledge, the fire safety works never took place.

Maassarani set up SRH in 2018 in the Isle of Man. Its directors were all professionals from other Isle of Man or British Virgin Islands-based firms. And because the shares in the company are owned by a foundation, there is no publicly available information linking Maassarani to it. The GP said the revelation of his involvement in the company was not in the public interest, that he derived no financial income from it, and that while he had been told about plans to move asylum seekers into Parliament Place, he was not involved in the day-to-day running of the company. The trust which owns SRH was founded to pay for education and training for his family, and Maassarani has a personal business history with people believed to have been involved in both running SRH and managing his interests in asylum seeker accommodation.

The agent who wrote to Parliament Place landlords promoting the asylum seeker deal signed off the correspondence as ‘Mike Murphy’. The BBC understands this to be Michael Murphy, at the time a partner at major Liverpool law firm and Everton stadium sponsor Hill Dickinson. The BBC have asked Murphy about his alleged involvement, and he said he could not respond because of client confidentiality. The BBC has found that as well as having acted as a solicitor for both Maassarani and Lawless, Murphy had personal business links to both men in relation to property deals worth nearly £2m.

He is also the son-in-law of one of the directors of the firm that managed the Waverley asylum seeker hotel in Cumbria, 76-year-old former building firm boss David Lloyd. Lloyd is now the sole director of SRH, which in recent months has faced fresh illegal evictions allegations in relation to another of its Liverpool buildings, Queensland Place. In November, leaseholders there secured an injunction against the firm to stop it changing the locks on some tenants’ rooms as part of a row over ground rent payments, with the company warned its assets could be seized and its director jailed if it was breached. Maassarani and Lloyd are both currently directors of a firm called Optimus Hotel Management, which has recently taken a loan out against the £3.5m Wirral King’s Gap asylum seeker hotel. Solicitor Murphy acted as a witness to the application.

The Wirral hotel remains asylum seeker accommodation, but the Cumbria hotel was closed in December 2023, owing more than £170,000 to unpaid staff and His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. It had been operated through a company that did not have its own bank account, and its liquidation fees were paid by another firm of which Maassarani is a director. Murphy – who resigned from Hill Dickinson last April – declined to respond to any of the BBC’s questions, citing “client confidentiality”. Hill Dickinson said it could not comment on “the matters of any individual organisation or the private interests of existing or former partners”. Lloyd has not responded to the BBC’s enquiries.

In a statement to the BBC, a spokesman for Dr Maassarani said he was “a local GP with over 20 years of NHS service to thousands of patients and their families across the Merseyside area” and “holds senior leadership positions within the NHS”. The statement added: “He is not in any way involved in the running or management of Schloss Roxburghe Holdings, neither does he benefit financially from it. As such he had no knowledge of, and was not involved in or responsible for, any communications with tenants at Parliament Place or Queensland Place.” It added he “is neither a party, defendant or respondent” in the injunction proceedings relating to Queensland Place.

Liverpool Riverside’s Labour MP Kim Johnson said the incident at Parliament Place raised questions about how asylum accommodation deals were done, and rejected Maassarani’s suggestion there was no public interest in knowledge of his link to SRH. She added: “It’s not good enough. I think there needs to be more investigation and scrutiny of how contracts are awarded and the whole procurement process. More due diligence is definitely required.” The Home Office – which the BBC understands has to approve all accommodation looking to be used by Serco – has declined to comment on its providers’ commercial relationships.

More Than 150 People Found Sleeping Rough In Liverpool

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The number of people out on the streets has dropped compared to the same period in 2024, reports the Liverpool Echo.

More than 150 people were found to be rough sleeping as temperatures dipped across Liverpool last month. Analysis by the city council has revealed how almost 2,000 calls were made to its Always Help Available helpline during December regarding people facing the challenges of homelessness. Working in partnership with the Whitechapel Centre, the local authority reopened its night assessment hub to provide a safe space for those who find themselves without a roof over their head.

Cllr Hetty Wood, cabinet member for housing, said how 56 people were able to access support services last month. The average stay for those in need was totalled at 10 days. Compared to 12 months previous, the number of people sleeping rough is down by 13%. Cllr Wood said: “From those 56, there were 32 positive move-ons and the council and the Whitechapel centre will continue working with anybody who needs it.” Throughout December, 112 people were supported into new accommodation or supported into a return to existing solutions.

The housing lead added: “These interventions are impactful but they do need to continue and we need to continue the services and it’s absolutely key that we don’t stop the work that we’re doing. More and more people are becoming homeless and rough sleeping due to the cost of living crisis and we need to be providing that support.”

The stats come as the city council confirmed it had signed a deal to provide on-site support for those who are homeless and require low to medium levels of support. YMCA Together delivers all housing management functions including a 24-hour concierge and the support provider will deliver the 24-hour support service to the service users. The aim of the service will be to improve the long-term health and wellbeing of those needing support while aiding their transition into more permanent accommodation. It is thought the move will save the local authority around £1.8m on expensive bed and breakfast accommodation.

The contract will be in place for up to two years with the option to extend for a further three. It is proposed the services will be provided at Camden Place, Camden Street. The on-site service will be capable of supporting up to 49 service users at any one time. Under current B&B arrangements, Liverpool Council pays the full nightly cost, often unrecoverable from housing benefit. Under the proposed new arrangements most or all of the rent can be covered by benefits, not the council’s core budget.

Cllr Liam Robinson, leader of Liverpool Council, said: “Preventing homelessness will always be a key political priority of this administration. We believe passionately that everybody should be in good quality accommodation. We’re still having to deal with a national emergency that is particularly acute in cities, Liverpool and other big cities as well.”

Inside The Unique Project Tackling Homelessness As A Community

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The Harbour Project is a Housing First programme designed to create a community and tackle social isolation. The pan-London project has caught the attention of the Labour government and offers a vision for how homelessness could be addressed in the future, reports the Big Issue.

Darren Rowe has lived in a shed and seen stabbings in hostels while experiencing homelessness in London. But now he is training to get back into construction jobs and rebuilding his life through an innovative new initiative. The Eastender has been living in one of the 23 self-contained flats at Your Place’s Harbour Project in Canning Town in the borough of Newham, East London, for the last six months.

The pan-London project is a Housing First model with a difference. Like traditional Housing First models, the Harbour Project offers individual homes alongside support for as long as people need. But where the project differs is its use of a congregate shared housing model. The accommodation features communal spaces and a kitchen where people can live together in a shared community. It is intended to tackle social isolation and loneliness.

For Rowe, 53, it has already been transformative. “When I opened the door to my flat, I had no expectations. I really didn’t. I knew it was going to be better than other places, God it couldn’t be much worse, but I opened the door and started looking round and I was like: “Is this mine?” he said. “I’m touched because I’m thinking about where I’ve come from the last four years from being on the streets and in godawful places to this. That day I moved in was fantastic. I felt like I’d won the lottery. We shouldn’t have one of these places in every city, we should have one in every town. Just one of these places in every town, the amount of difference it could make.”

Your Place opened the Harbour Project back in May last year following research from London Councils, funded by the Greater London Authority, that identified gaps in the capital’s homelessness services. That uncovered an issue where people were staying in hostel accommodation for long periods – sometimes multiple years – because there was no suitable move-on accommodation. The problem came down to people struggling to live independently when they got a place of their own.

“So a lot of people who had some social needs, or perhaps some concerns around social isolation, poor social skills,” said Amanda Dubarry, chief executive at Your Place. “They were kind of maintaining day-to-day life because they had the staff team but as soon as they lived on their own, they would become very isolated, very depressed and very anxious. And in all likelihood, they would go back to that street family.”

Your Place operates accommodation services with 153 bedspaces at its Canning Town base but the charity saw the chance to launch the Harbour Project last year after successfully bidding for funding. The new congregational Housing First model has proven popular with more than 100 referrals for its 23 flats, which are assured short-hold tenancies with rent of £110 a month including bills. Your Place is currently evaluating the project as it goes but, when Big Issue visited eight months after it opened, Dubarry insisted she was “blown away”.

“On Christmas Day I was messaging with one of the team that was on duty and she was sending me WhatsApp videos of the residents just having their Christmas dinner and dancing and just hanging out together,” said Dubarry. “I’m not much of a crier but I think two or three times I’ve got emotional about the Harbour Project when I’ve talked to the residents and they’ve shared the overwhelming positive experience and life-changing experience and sense of safety. It’s huge. You can’t really express in words how significant that is for the individuals involved.”

The Labour government has taken notice too. The homelessness strategy published at the end of 2025 did not feature the national commitment to rolling out Housing First that some, including Crisis and Homeless Link, had called for. There are three government-backed Housing First pilots in England – located in Greater Manchester, Liverpool City Region and the West Midlands. They have been operating for around eight years and government evaluations show the projects have been successful in tackling homelessness. While there are many other non-government-backed Housing First projects, Labour’s strategy did not commit to making the model a big part of its plans to halve rough sleeping by 2029.

But the Harbour Project was one of the featured projects detailed in the strategy. “I’d like to think that although Housing First still hasn’t got a commitment from the government to be any farther than a pilot, I’d like to think that this kind of longer-term model is something that will begin to embed in the future and will be rolled out in other areas,” said Dubarry. “We can’t just keep churning people through sausage factories. It works for some people. It doesn’t work for everyone. You know, no model works for everyone. But this seems to be a new model which is working for, you know, a group of people right across the capital for whom other services have failed time and time again.”

The Harbour Project has certainly made a difference for Rowe. The loss of his father and sister and alcohol addiction saw his life unravel. “Me and my ex-partner used to help out at Crisis over Christmas and one year I was there and the next year I was living on the streets myself. I lost it all. I took the wrong path in life,” he said. Before moving to the Harbour Project Rowe had lived in a hostel for three years, living in conditions that left him feeling unsafe and, at times, “wishing he was back on the street again”.

But his six-month spell in his own flat has given him the platform to take on courses to get his CSCS card so he can work in the construction industry once more. “I’m really looking forward to getting back into work,” he told Big Issue. While not everyone who is lifted out of homelessness will be able to rejoin the workforce, Rowe’s experience at the Harbour Project demonstrates how Housing First could contribute to the government’s homelessness and employment goals.

“I want to stand on my own two feet again,” said Rowe. “I work in the building game so it’s like this you’ve got your ladders and you’re climbing them. You need support at the bottom or someone holding the ladders. Now, I’ve never had that before. I wouldn’t have even bothered when I was in Ilford, I wouldn’t get on the ladders. Now I’m near the top, but I don’t have to look down no more because I know that someone from here is down the bottom looking after me. So what I’m trying to say is I’m near the top. Don’t ask me when I get to the top where I’m going. I know where I want to go but I’m near the top of the ladders and I just don’t have to look down no more because these guys are holding it for me.”

Rents In UK Are At Record Highs. Will They Keep Going Up?

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With record rent rises becoming the norm, The Big Issue looks at whether renters face more surges or if the tide is starting to turn in the favour of tenants.

Rents in the UK are now at the highest point on record, leaving renters on low incomes struggling to keep up or find an affordable place to live – but there may be signs that the rental boom is starting to fizzle out in 2026. Average private rents in the UK increased by 4% to £1,368 a month in the 12 months up to December 2025, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). But the rate at which rents are rising has been falling in recent months. The December figure is slightly down on the 4.4% recorded up to November 2025. However, with UK inflation currently at 3.4% and wage growth at 4.5%, rents have largely been outstripping both in recent times with renters feeling the pain of rising bills too.

Ben Twomey, chief executive at Generation Rent, said: “Homes are the foundations of our lives, but rents continue to rise faster than our wages, swallowing more and more of our income. High rents push people into homelessness and trap them in temporary accommodation, they pull children into poverty and prevent people from saving for the future. We rightly have caps on our energy and water bills, but the same protections don’t exist to stop landlords from pricing us out of our homes. The government can and must act through devolving powers to mayors to limit rent increases in their areas.”

The devolved countries in the UK have engaged with the issue of rising rents more directly than Westminster in recent years. The Scottish government limited rent increases and banned evictions during the cost of living crisis and are planning long-term rent controls. The Welsh government has also consulted on the idea of bringing in rent controls. Around 4.7 million households use the private rented sector in England with 11 million renters. Around 450,000 households in Wales are private renters while 887,000 households renting in Scotland, including 323,000 renting privately. The private rented sector is now the second biggest tenure of housing in England behind owner occupiers, amounting to around a fifth of all households in the country.

The most recent ONS statistics show average rents increased 3.9% annually to £1,424 a month in England, rose 5.7% to £822 in Wales and 2.8% to £1,018 in Scotland in the year up to December 2025. Renters in London are seeing rents 2.1% higher than in December 2024 at an average price of £2,268. Rent inflation in London is rising at the lowest rate in the UK. The highest average rent across the UK is found in the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea at £3,651 a month. Outside London, average rents are highest in Oxford at £1,913 a month. Private rents are rising at the fastest rate in the north-east of England, up 7.9% in the last year. However, rents in the North East are considered the lowest on average in England at £762 a month.

Overall, rent rises have been outpacing wage growth for virtually two years but the good news is that the gap between the two is closing. Around 1.2 million private rented households have reported finding it difficult to pay rent, according to the English Housing Survey. The proportion of income that tenants typically spend on rent has been rising in recent years for renters in England. In England, renters on the medium household income could expect to spend 36.3% of their income on an average-priced rented home. Analysis from Resolution Foundation found the average monthly rent in 2024 is more than £200 above affordable levels. That rises to 41.6% in London, where all of the local authorities with the least affordable rents are located, according to the ONS.  Housing is deemed affordable when renters spend less than 30% of their incomes on their housing costs. Tenants typically spend 25.9% of their income on rent in Wales and 25.3% in Northern Ireland.

Hannah Aldridge, senior research and policy analyst at the Resolution Foundation, said: “The latest data indicates that renting in England remains unaffordable, with the average monthly rent in 2024 more than £200 above affordable levels. With rental growth continuing to outpace income growth, the average renter is now spending 36.3% of their income on rent – well above the ‘affordability threshold’ of 30%. The unaffordability of renting should be a key concern for policymakers. Last year, 23% of non-pensioner households lived in the private rental sector, almost double the 12% who did twenty years ago.”

The Westminster government unfroze local housing allowance in April 2024 but tenants on low incomes are still facing a challenge to keep up. Labour declined to help renters keep up with rising rents when chancellor Rachel Reeves opted not to raise local housing allowance in line with the bottom 30% of market rents. With housing benefit frozen and universal credit rising by 1.7% in April 2025, people on low incomes are being locked out of the private rented sector with many facing homelessness. Households have faced rising bills and food costs in recent years as part of the cost of living crisis and there is no respite when it comes to housing costs. But there has been little action on the issues driving rising rents, namely high demand for properties and a lack of supply. Research from Zoopla found the price of new lets has risen by 21% in the last three years, dwarfing house prices that have increased by 4% over the same period.

The short answer to why rent is so high is because there is a shortage of affordable housing. There is a housing crisis in the UK because not enough homes have been built by successive governments in the last few decades at a time where social housing stock has been sold off to the private sector through Right to Buy or demolished and not replaced. An estimate from the National Housing Federation found around 340,000 new homes should be supplied in England each year with 145,000 them to be affordable. Shelter has called for 90,000 social rent homes to be built each year for the next decade. The previous Conservative government has previously targeted 300,000 new homes in England – a 2019 manifesto commitment – but failed to hit that mark.

There have also been gloomy predictions for the number of homes set to be built in the short-term future. Labour has committed to building 1.5 million homes by 2029, including prioritising social rent homes to ease the demand on the private rented sector in the long-term. In England, 208,600 dwellings were added to the country’s housing stock in 2024-25, including 190,600 newbuild homes. That’s down 6% on the previous year. Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced £39bn would be invested in affordable housing at the recent spending review in a bid to hit that total. Meanwhile, areas like Cornwall where tourism has seen a surge in short-term lets through the rise of Airbnb in recent years faces even more pressures on demand.

The private rental sector has picked up the slack in recent years and has doubled in size over the last two decades. The stiff competition has seen rents on the market increase but many landlords have kept pace by putting up rents for existing tenants. While generally speaking there is a shortage of private rental properties across the UK, the difference between supply and demand changes from region to region. The rate at which rents have been rising fell throughout 2025 but there is still no sign that private rents will fall any time soon in 2026. Rents on new lets are starting to hit the highest point of what tenants can afford and property portal Zoopla has declared the “rental boom is over”. Zoopla research found that average rents for new lets rose by 2.8% in the year up to April 2025. While rents were still record highs, this was significant as it represented the first time since rents started rising in 2022 that monthly increases dipped under the wider inflation rate. The property portal expects rents for new lets to rise by 2.5% across the UK in 2026.

Richard Donnell, executive director of research at Zoopla: “The rental market has made a big stride back towards normality over 2025 after a prolonged period of sky-high demand and a lack of homes for rent. This is welcome relief for renters who can expect to see a greater choice of homes, slower rent increases and a less competitive market. However, the high costs of buying a home remain a barrier to many renters, which will support demand for renting over 2026. While there are signs that landlords are buying homes again, we do not expect a big increase in supply, meaning rents are set to increase by 2.5% over 2026.”

Meanwhile, the National Residential Landlord Association has continually warned of a landlord exodus ahead of the introduction of the Renters’ Rights Act. Many of the new measures in the Renters’ Rights Act will come into effect in May 2026, finally banning no-fault evictions more than seven years after Theresa May’s government promised to axe them. The bill introduces a number of changes to boost renters’ rights and security in the homes but has faced criticism for its lack of action on making renting more affordable and the government has rejected introducing rent controls. Labour has promised the bill will end bidding wars between tenants as well as giving renters stronger rights to keep pets and avoid discrimination if they have children or are in receipt of benefits. What will the Renters’ Rights Act mean for private rental prices? Time will tell.