Trowers & Hamlins supports launch of national toolkit to help councils tackle temporary accommodation crisis

Published by the Building Better Community of Practice, the guidance brings together expertise from across the housing, planning, finance, construction and local government sectors to help councils accelerate the delivery of safe, dignified and cost effective temporary accommodation for households experiencing homelessness.

The toolkit comes at a time when councils are facing unprecedented pressure, and the situation is reaching crisis point. More than 177,000 children are currently living in temporary accommodation in England, while local authority spending on temporary accommodation has reached almost £3 billion a year.

Trowers & Hamlins contributed a number of key legal considerations, helping local authorities navigate the governance, procurement, real estate, housing benefit and regulatory considerations associated with delivering relocatable homes on meanwhile use land. The guidance is intended to give councils greater confidence in adopting innovative delivery models while ensuring legal and regulatory compliance.

Trowers & Hamlins Associate Greg Barton has also joined the Building Better Community of Practice Advisory Board, further strengthening the firm's involvement with the initiative and helping to steer its work to support innovation across the sector.

While the Government, as seen in the Budget, continues to focus on tackling homelessness and rough sleeping through additional funding and emergency interventions, which is an important response to immediate need, the toolkit highlights that long term solutions require greater housing supply and innovative approaches that can be deployed now to reduce reliance on expensive and often unsuitable forms of temporary accommodation.

Katie Saunders, Partner in the Construction team at Trowers, commented:

"We have been working with Building Better and the Housing Festival for many years supporting best practice and innovation in construction and at Trowers we think it's so important to use the significant improvements in industrialised construction in housing to provide solutions to the housing crisis that the country currently faces."

Emma Kirby, Senior Associate in the Real Estate – Public Sector and Affordable Housing team at Trowers, added:

"It is really important for Councils to understand the regulatory framework to inform their decision making process and we have provided a helpful check list for officers to enable them to comply with their legal obligations."

Commenting on his appointment to the Building Better: Community of Practice Board, Greg commented:

"I am delighted to be joining the Building Better Community of Practice Advisory Board and supporting its crucial work to drive innovation in affordable housing delivery.

The scale of the temporary accommodation challenge means that local authorities need practical solutions they can implement now. Relocatable temporary accommodation delivered through industrialised construction offers a genuine opportunity to bring forward high quality homes quickly, make better use of underutilised public land and reduce local authorities' reliance on costly emergency accommodation.

I look forward to working with my fellow Board members and partners across the housing sector to advance practical, scalable solutions that help local authorities deliver better outcomes for residents."

Katie Rudin and Trudi Sully, Co-Chairs of the Building Better Community of Practice Board, added:

"None of this replaces the deeper solution, which is building enough permanent, genuinely affordable homes so that temporary accommodation stops being a growth industry in the first place. But while that ambition is being delivered, councils need options that improve people’s lives now, at a cost the public purse can sustain. This toolkit gives them a practical route to achieve that."

Download the toolkit: Local Authority Toolkit for Relocatable Temporary Accommodation on Meanwhile Use Land - Building Better