London borough action plan sees use of hotel and B&Bs for temporary accommodation cut by 84%

The Royal Borough of Greenwich has reduced its use of hotel and B&Bs for households in temporary accommodation by 84% in the last 18 months, with just three families currently in hotels.

The local authority said this had resulted in savings of around £5.88m.

Greenwich reported demand soaring from around five rooms a night in September 2022 to 269 rooms in September 2023 – resulting in costs of around £22,000 a night.

In April last year, the council reached an unprecedented peak of 280 rooms a night. 

Greenwich said it had put into action a collaboration between its Housing and Digital Services teams tasked with using data to identify solutions to decrease the council’s use of hotel and B&Bs and target resources towards early interventions.

The council aimed to access real-time reports on key metrics, which identified the interventions which would help households out of hotels quickly, while limiting the impact on housing register applicants who were in significant housing need but not homeless.

Greenwich’s initial interventions included:

• dramatically speeding up the administration of homelessness assessments (prioritising families)
• using 50% of 133 newly acquired social homes to provide 100 direct offers for people spending the longest time in temporary accommodation
• using 100 more of the council’s own homes as in-borough temporary accommodation
• targeted support to help older people and our own council tenants living in temporary accommodation move into settled homes, and
• preventative use of incentives to help private sector tenants at risk of homelessness retain their tenancies.

As a result of these efforts, the number of Greenwich households in hotels had dropped to 44 - or by 84% - in March 2025 and a reduction in cost for the council from £29,500 at its peak in October 2023 to around £3,600 a night.

Cllr Anthony Okereke, Leader of The Royal Borough of Greenwich, said: “We’re leading the way in London at reducing the numbers of families in hotels or B&Bs and have been able to use a holistic approach that harnesses our collective expertise to come up with effective and efficient solutions that will have a lasting impact on people’s lives.”

Cllr Pat Slattery, Greenwich’s Cabinet Member for Housing Management, Neighbourhoods and Homelessness said: “Living in a hotel room can have a real impact on families’ well-being during an already vulnerable time in their lives.

“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 (it may never be zero as in some instances there is not another option).

“The housing crisis hasn’t ended, but we’ve made great strides in this area - and we’ll continue to work to end other forms of temporary accommodation that aren’t suitable for families, by April next year.”

Harry Rodd