housing and living standards · the national record
Homelessness and temporary accommodation in England
On 31 March 2026, 135,580 households were living in temporary accommodation arranged by English councils, including 177,530 children. Both are record highs: the total is up 1.1 per cent on the quarter and 3.6 per cent on the year, and the brief fall of late 2025 has reversed. Every figure is MHCLG's own, from the January to March 2026 statutory homelessness release.
How to read this
Statutory homelessness is what councils are legally obliged to record: households that approach their council and are owed a duty under the Homelessness Reduction Act. Temporary accommodation figures are a stock, counted on the last day of the quarter; duty figures are a flow during the quarter and are seasonal, so MHCLG compares them to the same quarter a year earlier and this page does the same. None of these figures count people sleeping rough: MHCLG's own guidance says these statistics are not suitable for that, and the separate annual rough sleeping snapshot is a different measure.
Computed from MHCLG's statutory homelessness England time series and detailed local authority tables for January to March 2026, published 13 August 2026. Every headline figure is asserted at build time against MHCLG's own statistical release; the build fails on any mismatch.
the stock
135,580 households in temporary accommodation
86,460 of those households, 63.8 per cent, include dependent children: 177,530 children were living in temporary accommodation on 31 March 2026, up 5.2 per cent on the year. The other 49,120 households are adult only. MHCLG reports the total as a record high for households both with and without children; the small fall recorded in December 2025 lasted one quarter.
how it grew
Households in temporary accommodation since 1998
The series has a shape: a peak above 100,000 in the mid 2000s, a long fall to 48,010 at the end of 2010, then fifteen years of nearly uninterrupted growth. On the eve of the pandemic there were 88,310 households in temporary accommodation; there are now 135,580, a rise of 54 per cent since December 2019.
Households in temporary accommodation on 31 December each year, England. The low point was 48,010 at the end of 2010; the pre pandemic figure was 88,310. Source: MHCLG statutory homelessness England time series, Table TA1.
where they are
More than a third are in nightly paid rooms
51,390 households, 37.9 per cent of the total, were in nightly paid, privately managed accommodation, the most expensive and least stable category, a share up 2.3 percentage points on the year. 12,220 households were in bed and breakfasts, 9.0 per cent of the total, a share down 3.0 points on the year; 1,900 of them were families, and 1,000 families had been in bed and breakfast beyond the six week legal limit, down 16.7 per cent on the quarter. 43,180 households were placed outside their own local authority area, up 4.1 per cent on the year.
37.9 per cent of all households in TA, up 2.3 points on the year
9.0 per cent of the total; share down 3.0 points on the year
down 16.7 per cent on the quarter and still falling
up 4.1 per cent on the year; most stay within their own region
Selected categories on 31 December 2025; categories overlap and do not sum to the total. Source: MHCLG statutory homelessness release and Table TA1.
the quarter's flow
92,200 households asked for help in one quarter
During January to March 2026, 92,200 households had an initial assessment, down 1.0 per cent on the year, and 83,850 were owed a duty to prevent or relieve homelessness: 39,200 threatened with homelessness (6,540 of them because of a Section 21 no fault eviction notice, down 3.5 per cent on the year) and 44,650 already homeless, down 5.3 per cent. MHCLG reports that 44.3 per cent of duties owed ended with homelessness prevented or relieved, down from 45.3 per cent the previous quarter.
the postcode dimension
A London crisis first, but not only
Temporary accommodation per 1,000 households: 21.1 in London against 2.8 in the rest of England. London holds 76,020 of the 135,580 households, 56 per cent of the national total. The highest rates outside the capital cluster in places with high rents and constrained stock.
Highest rate per 1,000 households
7,561 households
5,019 households
3,684 households
4,253 households
4,314 households
4,197 households
2,818 households
1,810 households
3,084 households
2,712 households
12 councils have no published figures this quarter: Ashford, Basildon, Bristol, Castle Point, Folkestone & Hythe, Lichfield, North East Lincolnshire, Redcar & Cleveland, Ribble Valley, Slough, Tewkesbury, Wyre. Their contribution is included in the England and regional totals but cannot be ranked here.
Households in temporary accommodation per 1,000 households by local authority, 31 December 2025, highest ten shown. Source: MHCLG detailed local authority tables, Table TA1.
honest questions
What this page can and cannot tell you
- 1.
Is this all homelessness?
No. This is statutory homelessness: households that approached a council and were owed a legal duty. People sleeping rough, sofa surfing, in squats or who never applied are not here, and MHCLG's own guidance says these statistics are not suitable for counting them. The annual rough sleeping snapshot is a separate measure on a separate page of the government's site.
- 2.
Was the fall of late 2025 the turning point?
No. The 0.4 per cent fall recorded in December 2025, the first quarterly fall since 2022, lasted one quarter: the total rose again to a record in March 2026, and MHCLG reports record highs for households both with and without children. The clearest genuine improvement remains families in bed and breakfast beyond the six week limit, which has kept falling.
- 3.
Can I compare this with Scotland and Wales?
Not directly. Each nation has its own legal framework and definitions, and MHCLG lists cross UK comparison as an unsuitable use. Scottish and Welsh homelessness statistics exist at local authority level and are on this site's roadmap as separate pages.
- 4.
How far back does the series go?
The temporary accommodation table runs from 1998, but the duty statistics start in April 2018, when the Homelessness Reduction Act and the H-CLIC data collection replaced the old P1E returns. MHCLG says duty figures are not comparable across that break, so this page never compares them across it.
Sources & method
Data provenance
- MHCLG, Statutory homelessness in England: January to March 2026 (England time series, detailed local authority tables and statistical release), published 13 August 2026 ↗· Open Government Licence v3.0
Caveats & data notes
- Temporary accommodation figures are a stock at quarter end (31 March 2026); duty figures are a flow during the quarter and are seasonal, so all flow comparisons here are to the same quarter a year earlier, following MHCLG's own practice.
- Data are provisional when first published and revised the following quarter and at year end; figures on this page are the 13 August 2026 publication and may be revised.
- MHCLG rounds published figures to the nearest 10 and computes percentage changes on unrounded figures, so a change recomputed from the published numbers can differ from MHCLG's stated change by up to a tenth of a point. This page quotes MHCLG's own stated percentages.
- Duty statistics begin in April 2018 under the Homelessness Reduction Act; MHCLG states they are not comparable with the pre 2018 P1E collection. The temporary accommodation series is MHCLG's own continuous table from 1998, shown with that break in mind.
- England only. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland operate different legal frameworks and publish separate statistics that MHCLG says should not be compared with these.
- Rough sleeping is not measured here. MHCLG's own suitability guidance says these statistics cannot count people sleeping rough, sofa surfing or households that never applied for help.
- 12 councils (Ashford, Basildon, Bristol, Castle Point, Folkestone & Hythe, Lichfield, North East Lincolnshire, Redcar & Cleveland, Ribble Valley, Slough, Tewkesbury and Wyre) have no published individual figures this quarter, shown as '..' in MHCLG's tables; the England and regional totals still include their contribution, and the nine regional totals sum to the England figure exactly. The league table necessarily excludes them. Rates per 1,000 households use MHCLG's own published household denominators.
Every figure on this page traces to its official source. Share it as it stands.
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