Homeless families from London are being 'dumped' in Manchester and elsewhere across the North of England, MPs have been told.
A parliamentary inquiry into children living in temporary accommodation heard that families from the capital are being moved up North due to rising costs. However, in some cases, families from Greater Manchester are being sent down South, a local charity said.
Representatives from charities and councils who gave evidence at the House of Commons inquiry on Tuesday (November 5) set out the 'massive' impact the move has on families whose lives are turned upside down. They also spoke of the huge costs to taxpayers.
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Dr Laura Neilson, CEO of the Shared Health Foundation which supports homeless families in Greater Manchester, told the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committe: "I've seen families arriving in North Manchester from Camden - just sent up, five kids.
"I've seen families arrive up North from all over the country. I know that, as an area, we've also sent families. We had one family who were homeless in Oldham and got sent to Hastings for some bizarre reason.
"The distances are huge. But we don't have a national picture because we don't collect the data."
The Manchester Evening News has been reporting extensively on hidden homelessness which sees families stuck in temporary accommodation for years. In September, we revealed that one in every 33 children in Manchester are without a permanent home.
Earlier this year, councillors in the London said that homeless families were being sent to Manchester in what was likened to a ‘Second World War billeting operation’. The parliamentary inquiry was told that London is now facing 'the brunt' of the national housing crisis.
Explaining why many families are being moved up North, Dr Neilson said: "You have a hierarchy of money. Central London generally has a bit more money than outer London, London has a bit more money than the shires, and then it goes up North basically. And so you see people move from central London out to Watford and then from Watford out a bit further. It's just like a domino effect.
"We're just moving lots of families along. That's to do with economics. That feels solvable. And we see the same even within a city-region like Manchester or Liverpool. We see the same thing happening across areas that are more expensive than less expensive."
Dr Neilson, who is also a practising A&E doctor, said that, from a family's perspective, they are 'dumped with very few possessions somewhere they've never been before'. She said: "The impact is massive for a family. They lose their social connection, you lose all your natural pathways of after school clubs and anything like that, you lose your mates to come and help you look after the baby.
"A lot of kids will make a herculean effort the first couple of weeks to go to school and then it drifts off. And the other thing is you lose your place in other public sector services, you lose your place in the NHS, you lose your place in a [Special Educational Needs] assessment. Lots of things you just fall out of. And then you end up back at the beginning of the queue again.
"And if you're moved multiple times across local authority areas, which we do see, that then happens to you repeatedly. So it's definitely disruptive and I don't think we are fully aware of the cost of that."
She added: "What we know is, as a society, we're spending a lot of money on these families for - excuse my language - crap outcomes, like we are. They're very expensive families, we're pouring our resources in just a really inappropriate way."
In September, Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham revealed that the 10 councils in the city-region are currently spending £65m a year on the cost of temporary accommodation. He is lobbying the government for more funding to build council and social housing.
Rochdale council's head of strategic housing, Hannah Courtney-Adamson, also gave evidence at the inquiry. She told the committee that Greater Manchester has an agreement that residents requiring temporary accommodation are not placed outside the city-region.
She said: "We do place out of borough, but it's all within the Greater Manchester region, so we don't go further. However, in the North we are receiving obviously a lot of the southern local authorities because we're a cheaper stock area so obviously it's far cheaper and cost effective to send people, but the impact on the wider system and long-term, I'm not sure that's value for money."
The council boss said that all temporary accommodation is regularly inspected - including bed and breakfasts which are currently being used in Rochdale due to the high demand for emergency housing. But she said that councils are in 'direct competition' with asylum seeker accommodation providers who offer 'rogue landlords' more money and an exemption to rules on housing standards.
Asked what changes are needed to fix the issues with temporary accommodation, Dr Neilson said: "I think this system is incentively going the wrong way. If you're running a local authority in the Luton area, I can see you're under massive pressure from London.
"That doesn't mean we just precipitate the behaviour up the country. We need to think about it systematically and what's driving that.
"Is it really no choice or have we not looked at other options? I desperately don't want this to be an unfixable thing where inevitably everyone gets moved up the country. That's not how we want society to work. I don't want it to work like that."
