Wakefield hotel paid £1m a year to house homeless as council’s costs rocket

Data shows the local authority’s overall annual hotel bill for providing residents with temporary accommodation has topped £2m for the past three financial years.

According to the statistics, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the amount spent on short-term hotel stays has increased more than tenfold in nine years.

The council said there is “no quick fix” to the problem due to an increase in the number of people needing help, similar to other towns and cities in the UK.

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

During the last financial year (2023/24), the council paid a total of £2,034,019 for residents to stay at nine hotels across the district.

One hotel, which the council has refused to identify, has been paid more than £1m in each of the past two years.

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

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

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

According to the data, costs passed the £1m mark for the first time in 2018/19 ((£1.3m) then rose sharply at the start of the pandemic.

Pam Taylor, Wakefield Council’s interim service director for communities, said: “Sadly, like many other cities and towns up and down the country, we are finding that more people need our help.

“People become homeless for lots of different reasons. Social causes like poverty, unemployment and life events. And increasingly, because of the rising cost of living, many people become homeless because they can no longer afford to rent.

“These reasons are not unique to Wakefield.”

Ms Taylor said the council is trying to work with partner organisations to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place.

She added: “We’re also trying to identify less costly ways to provide temporary accommodation for those that do. Sadly, there is no quick fix.

“In the meantime, we have a legal duty to the homeless and, like all councils, must work with what’s available now.

“If you or anyone you know is homeless or at risk of becoming homeless, please contact us sooner rather than later.”

In January last year, a scrutiny committee meeting was told the council was spending £75 a night for each person housed in hotel accommodation.

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

At that time, it had fewer than 300 homes in its property portfolio, including 210 houses leased from Wakefield District Housing and 54 in the private rented sector.

The council released the financial data for the past nine financial years, following a FOI request by the Local Reporting Democracy Service, but refused to identify hotel names or locations.

The council’s senior information governance officer said: “It is our policy not to disclose details of locations where homeless people may be being accommodated.”

Fifteen hotels were named by the council when a similar request for information was submitted in 2022.

At the time, the council named the following 15 “main hotels used across the years” to provide accommodation for homeless people:

York House Hotel, Featherstone Hotel, Bank House, Citilodge, Hotel Accor Castleford, Stanley View Guest House, Rowlands Croft Guest House, Crofton Arms, Travelodge, Holiday Inn, Premier Inn, Cedar Court Hotel, Nite Inn, Hotel St Pierre and Kirklands Hotel.