Council to spend £2.9m on tackling homelessness crisis in St Albans
A total of 227 households in St Albans are currently staying in temporary accommodation, including those in hotels.
Money that was due to be spent redeveloping empty garage sites in St Albans into council homes will now be spent buying homes to tackle a growing homelessness crisis.
Spending by St Albans City & District Council on homelessness is set to be £2m higher than expected across the 2025/26 financial year, with 93 households – including 57 with children – currently accommodated in hotels.
Councillors on the authority’s housing and inclusion committee on Monday (September 15) agreed that £2.86m that had been allocated to redeveloping the Frobisher Road/Drakes Drive garage site into around a dozen council homes will instead be spent on buying homes that can be used as temporary accommodation for homeless families.
Plans for the Frobisher Road/Drakes Drive site, though, have not been abandoned, with money still set aside “to review alternative options” for its redevelopment.
A report prepared for councillors said: “These include modular accommodation or non-typical construction methods as a way of delivering more temporary accommodation properties to address future demand.”
David Reavill, the council’s strategic housing manager, told councillors that “some degree of preparatory work had been done for the garage redevelopment, but no planning application had been submitted.”
Committee chair Cllr Simon Johns (LD) said: “We are in a perfect storm of being a highly sought after commuter area with high property values."
Cllr Sarwar Shamsher (LD) described the situation as “really bad” and said that staying in hotels would affect the health and education of families placed there.”
Simon Smith, the council’s assistant director for housing, said the authority is “working flat out” to find solutions to the problem, including using council-owned properties and working with housing associations and other partners, including the government.
Linda Parker, the council’s assistant director for finance, said there is a “very significant” financial risk for the council in tackling homelessness, given the growing numbers of families they have to find accommodation for.