Lambeth Council has secured £6.6m in government funding intended to help it reduce the pressure created by temporary accommodation, as thousands of homeless households in the borough are living in such housing.
The allocation is part of a £91m programme for 14 English councils receiving Exceptional Financial Support, the government’s mechanism for authorities under severe financial strain. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government announced the wider programme on 15 September. It said the money would be distributed across 2026-27 and 2027-28 to support projects designed by the recipient councils to improve costly services and reduce their reliance on emergency support.
Lambeth said its share would be £3m in 2026-27 and £3.6m in 2027-28. The council announced the local plans on 22 September, saying it had successfully bid for the funding.
Four areas identified for the grant
According to the council, the money will be used in four areas: additional help for families seeking stable, longer-term housing; bringing council-owned homes back into use; work to address fraudulent claims; and stronger homelessness-prevention services.
The plans do not amount to an immediate new housing allocation for every household in temporary accommodation. Rather, the council has presented the funding as a way to change and strengthen services around prevention, placements and the use of its existing properties.
The government’s announcement gives the policy a wider context. It said the 14 funded authorities would use the investment to modernise intensive services. Examples named nationally include technology and adult social care projects, while Haringey is to use funding to buy homes and reduce its use of external temporary-accommodation providers. Lambeth’s own announcement sets out a different local approach centred on helping households move towards settled homes, prevention and property use.
Scale of the local pressure
Lambeth said 4,100 homeless households were living in temporary accommodation in the borough. It described that accommodation as a last resort and said the cost of the temporary-accommodation crisis exceeds £100m a year.
Those figures explain why the authority has stressed the limited scale of the award alongside welcoming it. The £6.6m is spread over two financial years and is not presented by the council as enough to meet the full annual cost it reports. It is intended to fund changes that could ease demand and improve routes into longer-term housing.
The council has also said it faces a £93m gap in its finances, linking the pressure on its budget to rising demand for services including homelessness support. It attributes part of the challenge to past reductions in government funding and to a shortage of social housing. Those are the council’s assessments and policy arguments; the government said its national programme was aimed at helping financially pressured councils modernise high-cost services.
What happens next
The government allocation confirms Lambeth’s place among the 14 authorities supported by the £91m programme. The local announcement provides the first outline of how the borough expects to use its share, but does not set out a timetable for individual projects or targets for the number of households that may move out of temporary accommodation.
For residents affected by homelessness, the practical test will be whether the additional prevention work, property programmes and housing support translate into more stable placements. For the council, the funding offers a defined two-year intervention against a financial pressure it says is far larger and longer-term.
Lambeth has linked the announcement to its Services Worth Fighting For campaign, which calls for greater investment in local services. A public launch meeting for that campaign is scheduled for 15 October at Lambeth Town Hall, according to the council.
