Basildon Council to acquire 500 new homes over five years

The growing demand for temporary accommodation for residents in need is causing financial strain on the council as it forks out on expensive B&Bs and hotels - often as far away as Barking.

In 2019/20, Basildon Council recorded just nine households requiring temporary accommodation, rising all the way up to 90 last year.

However, it is predicted that by the end of this year that number will have risen to 125 and could increase even further to 215.

If the situation continues to worsen, that number could be as high as 482 households by the 2028/29 financial year.

The council’s spend on temporary accommodation is expected to hit £3million by the end of next year.

Acquiring hundreds of homes over the next five years will allow the council to reduce its reliance on temporary accommodation.

Labour council leader Gavin Callaghan said this will include buying homes “wherever there is good value for money”, including new build properties.

He said: “We will explore all options, we are looking at car park 14, the new Chapelgate site, we could buy units there and we could look at whether to buy the Broadmayne development outright, there are other ways we can look at.

“I can’t say we will buy 200 one-bed homes in Basildon, because we might buy two beds as well as one bed.”

Mr Callaghan defended the potential costs of this, noting it is more expensive in “terms of paying for B&B each week.”

He added: “We are at the mercy of the nightly charge, whatever that is set at we must pay.

“The knock-on costs on those, say, raising a family of four or five in two or three bedrooms in Southend is such that those people could lose their jobs, they could be presenting at a GP surgery or at A&E, their children could fall behind at school.

“The knock-on is a vicious circle of things, we should be doing this for the NHS and schools and police, for all of the public sector we should be intervening earlier and finding proper places.”