CROYDON IN CRISIS: As it struggles to find suitable accommodation for the borough’s homeless families, official figures show that the council has split up one family placed in temporary accommodation for 12 years.
EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Notorious: Croydon Council, under Conservative and Labour leadership, have continued to use B&Bs like Gilroy Court for temporary accommodation
Official council figures, obtained by Inside Croydon, show that more than 200 families being housed by Croydon Council have been split up in order to find placements for them.
In one instance, a family has been in Croydon Council temporary accommodation, but split up, since 2012.
Croydon’s Labour opposition has described it as “an entirely unacceptable situation”.
Council sources suggest that the figures provided by the housing department at Fisher’s Folly ought to come with some kind of cautious caveat over accuracy. One Katharine Street source suggested that for a family to have been in temporary accommodation and divided among separate rooms in a B&B or such like for 12 years is long enough to have seen any older children grow into adulthood by now.
All local authorities in England and Wales have a legal duty to provide emergency temporary accommodation. Under that housing legislation, people can remain in temporary accommodation for a maximum of six weeks before the local authority has a duty to find more permanent accommodation.
Croydon Council currently has around 3,500 families in temporary accommodation.
Converted: the Windsor House office block now provides nearly 200 temporary homes
This accommodation includes “hostel”-style apartments in places such as Concord House and Windsor House, the former office blocks on London Road, which were converted by the council to provide more temporary accommodation for the borough’s homeless.
The majority of Croydon’s homeless are provided with rooms in B&Bs and hotels, such as Gilroy Court in Thornton Heath, made notorious when featured on BBC Newsnight as long ago as October 2012. Croydon Council has continued to use Gilroy Court, and similar B&Bs, ever since.
In 2022, Inside Croydon reported how the Local Government Ombudsman had ordered a review of the council’s temporary accommodation practices after a mother, undergoing cancer treatment, and her off-spring had been housed in a hotel room for eight years.
Housing director: Susmita Sen
The policy of splitting families in order to provide their accommodation is only now coming to light, as the council under Tory Mayor Jason Perry has been congratulating itself for reducing its housing costs by £13.5million a year and halving its homelessness assessment waiting times by more than half under new(ish) director of housing Susmita Sen.
It is a briefing paper from Sen that lays bare the number of families the council is splitting up. From five or six in 2019 to 2021, the numbers have soared since 2022, with 74 families in temporary accommodation and split up in 2024.
Council officials already have monthly meetings with the housing department, where Croydon’s performance under the Homelessness (Suitability of Accommodation) (England) Order 2003 – which is supposed to limit stays in temporary accommodation to six weeks or less.
There have been calls for a council policy to ban splitting up families in temporary accommodation. But in a briefing from Sen, seen by Inside Croydon, she said: “The Council faces high demand for accommodation, and this demand has risen in recent years.
Official figures: the chart from the council briefing document that shows 206 ‘split’ families in temporary accommodation, with one family housed in such a manner since 2012. Since 2022, the number has risen sharply
“A complete ban [on splitting up families] would hinder the council’s ability to meet its statutory obligation to provide accommodation when required. Notwithstanding that, we agree with the aspiration to end the splitting of households,” Sen wrote.
“Instead of a ban, the suggested wording by officers which can be included could be ‘in recognition of accommodation shortage and to comply with statutory homeless duty, in exceptional circumstances, the council may split households in two or more units of accommodation, taking into account any welfare concerns and for a reasonably short period of time’.”
At last week’s Town Hall council meeting, the matter was raised by Stuart King, the leader of the Labour group, who said there is clear need for urgent action.
In his speech, King said: “This very evening there are over 200 homeless families in Croydon who are forced to sleep apart, denied the right to live together as a single-family household, all under one single roof…
“… This means parents are separated from some of their children and their partner in what I would hope all of us in this chamber would find an entirely unacceptable situation.
“We have been told by officers that such decisions are not taken lightly and should be ‘rare and brief’…
“… And yet figures provided by the council show that in the past two years 185 families have been split… The case for action is clear. The case for action is urgent.”
Jason Perry has been Mayor of Croydon since 2022.
Read more: ‘My family’s hell on earth’: 18 months in a Croydon B&B
Read more: Croydon’s B&B nightmare: ‘an indictment of modern Britain’
Read more: Disabled resident’s harrowing plea: ‘I don’t want to be in here’
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Labour have an absolute check most of this was created in their watch just like Regina Road and misuse of Housing Revenue Account funds! It is a shameful record and things must improve at pace
That’s actually not true, Les, and the facts and figures show.
Councils under both parties have let down the residents in this borough. But this is an inhumane policy, applied to some of the most vulnerable in society, which has been ratcheted up under piss-poor Perry.
Hope you’ve settled in to your nice, new, big home.
Les as vice chair of Tenants & Leaseholder panel has been compromised and that’s why he sees nothing wrong with Mayor Perry
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Another example of central government under funding of local government, inadequate house building and yes local incompetence. The damage caused to children and adults by being split up like this will have emotional costs that are incalculable and financial costs that will be all too easy to calculate.
Key oversight is the fact that a number of families have been placed outside the borough when local landlords have offered accommodation locally. I know of one landlord from whom I had personally secured terms on TA, presented this option to my housing officer who declined it as it was deemed expensive. How expensive only god knows. We were treated as sub-humans placed in the cheapest 2-room HMO, damp and mouldy accommodation with barely space to breathe.
When my long term TA placement was finally arranged after spending 8 months in this HMO, the agency employed provided no instructions. I was forced to jump through 3 different accommodation agencies to finally get the address of the accommodation. My storage people arrived 4 days after my relocation date. This was total mayhem and affected my children school attendance. There was absolutely no coordination, each question was met with a standard 7 day response. Who is benefiting from having so many external agencies involved in the procurement of TA, when they do absolutely nothing other than to collect their commissions? The whole set up stinks of corruption.
When will the council Housing officers pull their finger out and make the whole TA experience a little more pleasant.
My neighbour too was tossed between pillar to post before finally securing long term accommodation. The subsidence and roof leak in his house meant the family was uprooted and placed in the north of the borough. He too was left at mercy of external housing procurement consultants who behaved in the most contemptuous manner.
The Council Planning Department was busy demolishing family homes to put up unaffordable flats. Now we have a shortage of family homes and flats sitting empty. We can thank Heather Cheesborough and planning Chairs Paul Scott and Chris Clark for that.
The important point here, Sally, is not the use of “family homes” as sites for blocks of flats. It is that the only homes being built are mostly for private sale, some for costly shared ownership. Even with £200m chucked at BxB, there were not enough homes built in Croydon for social rent, by the council or by housing associations
Agree. Both the demolishing of family homes and the preference for building homes for private sale (including shared ownership) are a factor of privileging developers at the expense of residents’ housing needs.