Number Of Homeless Children In Merseyside Still Rising

The number of homeless children living in temporary accommodation in Merseyside has continued to rise under the new Labour government, reports the Liverpool Echo.

A total of 1,548 children in our region were homeless and living in temporary housing such as hotels and B&Bs between October and December 2024. That’s up from 1,419 children in the previous quarter, and higher than the 1,055 children in the same period of 2023. It’s also the highest on record since comparable figures became available in 2019. The majority of the children (1,147 of them) were in Liverpool. That’s up from 1,011 in the previous quarter – from 741 in the last three months of 2023 and from 504 in the last three months of 2022.

Across England as a whole, the numbers continued to rise up to the end of December. A total of 165,510 children were homeless and living in temporary housing such as hotels and B&Bs between October and December 2024. That’s up from 163,970 children in the previous quarter and 145,780 at the same time last year. There has however been a decrease in the number of Merseyside families stuck in B&Bs for over six weeks.

There were a total of 3,110 homeless families across England who had been living in temporary accommodation for at least six weeks at the end of 2024. That’s down from 3,470 in the three months to October and 3,770 in the three months to July, which was the record high. The last two quarters are the first since the pandemic where the number of homeless households with children living in temporary housing for over six weeks has fallen. In Merseyside, 85 families had been in B&Bs for over six weeks at the end of last year. That’s down from 130 in the three months to October (which was the record high) but is still higher than the 53 that had been in B&Bs for over six weeks in December 2023 and the 39 in December 2022.

The problem of homeless households having to live in temporary accommodation is more prominent in some parts of the country. The highest rates of households living in temporary homes are all in London. Some 58.0 out of every 1,000 households in Newham were living in temporary homes in the last three months of 2024. That’s the highest rate in the country. In London as a whole, 19.7 out of every 1,000 homes were in temporary digs.

Slough had the highest rate outside of the capital with 20.7 out of every 1,000 homes. In Luton it was 14.5 out of every 1,000. In Hastings it was 13.3, in Manchester it was 12.3, in Birmingham it was 12.1 and in Crawley it was also 12.1.

Liverpool had the highest rate in Merseyside with 5.1 out of every 1,000 households. That’s followed by Sefton (1.5), Knowsley (1.1), Wirral (1.0), and St Helens (0.6).

Dan Wilson Craw, Deputy Chief Executive of Generation Rent said: “Behind every statistic are thousands of stories of people facing some of the most stressful, traumatic and insecure times of their lives. More and more children are spending their formative years trapped living in temporary accommodation, often in overcrowded and unsafe conditions and at huge cost to local authorities. This is a national scandal that demands government action.”

He added: “Our rental system is broken. With rent prices soaring far beyond what we earn, people become trapped living in temporary accommodation because they simply can’t find somewhere affordable to live. The Government’s house building programme is welcome, but will take years to have a noticeable impact. People need change now. It must intervene to slam the brakes on soaring rents, while also unfreezing Local Housing Allowance so those on low incomes have more options in finding a home.”