In England alone, more than 172,000 children are living in temporary accommodation.<\/p>\n
To address this, the government plans to end the “unlawful placement” of families in B&Bs beyond six weeks.<\/p>\n
Councils are currently only meant to house families with children in B&Bs as a last resort, and for a maximium of six weeks, the law says.<\/p>\n
But figures from April to June 2025, external<\/a> show that more than 2,000 children had been living in B&Bs for longer than that.<\/p>\n Child poverty levels are currently at a “historic high”, the government says, with 4.5 million children – roughly a third – living in relative poverty after housing costs. Three quarters of these come from working families.<\/p>\n “Too many families are struggling without the basics: a secure home, warm meals, and the support they need to make ends meet,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer said.<\/p>\n The government’s child poverty strategy comes after it reversed the two-child benefit cap<\/a>, expanded free school meals to all children from families receiving Universal Credit<\/a>, and introduced free breakfast clubs.<\/p>\n The IFS said ending the two-child benefit cap was forecast to account for 450,000 of the children lifted out of poverty by the end of the Parliament, with the remainder attributable to expanding free school meals.<\/p>\n Other announcements, including on temporary accommodation, were targeted at “much smaller groups of people”, it added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In England alone, more than 172,000 children are living in temporary accommodation. To address this, the government plans…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299894,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-299893","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}