Wakefield Council spends more than £2m on hotels for homeless people

A single hotel has been paid more than £1 million in each of the past two years by a local authority to house homeless people, new figures show.

The figures show that Wakefield Council’s annual general hotel bill for providing temporary accommodation residents has exceeded £2 million in each of the last three financial years.

The amount spent on short-term hotel stays has increased more than tenfold in nine years, statistics show.

The council said there was “no quick fix” to the problem due to the increase in the number of people needing help.

Councils have a legal duty to provide accommodation for anyone who becomes homeless.

During the last financial year, the council paid a total of £2,034,019 for residents to stay at nine hotels in the borough, figures from a freedom of information request showed.

This is more than double the amount paid by the hotel which received the second highest amount of £458,930.

The total amount spent on hotels in 2022/23 was £2,347,000, with £2,081,776 spent in 2021/22.

In contrast, the annual cost to the taxpayer in 2015/16 was much lower at £190,859.

Pam Taylor, Wakefield Council’s acting director of services for communities, said more and more people needed help, and this was not unique to Wakefield.

“People become homeless for many different reasons. Social causes such as poverty, unemployment and life events.

“And increasingly, because of the rising cost of living, many people are becoming homeless because they can no longer afford to rent.

Ms Taylor said the council was trying to work with partner organizations to prevent people becoming homeless in the first place.

In January last year, a scrutineering committee meeting was told the council was spending £75 a night on each person staying at the hotel.

Council bosses said the authority was becoming increasingly reliant on hotels to house some of its most vulnerable residents.