£3M to be spent on buying properties for emergency accommodation in Southampton
The City Council wants to reduce the use of B&B's and hotel rooms
Dozens of properties are set to be bought by a council to provide emergency accommodation for homeless households.
In recent years, Southampton City Council has had to spend large sums of money on expensive bed and breakfast and hotel rooms as homelessness continues to rise.
Councillors have approved a proposal to borrow £3million to purchase additional properties that would bolster the authority’s emergency accommodation stock.
Subject to full council sign off, a further £1.7million from repaid housing improvement grants will also be used on the project.
Cllr Simon Letts, cabinet member for finance and resource, said: “The purpose here is clear.
“We need to take some action about providing affordable accommodation for those in chronic housing need, those that are homeless.”
Since 2019/20 the number of households approaching the council as homeless has surged by 64 per cent.
This has resulted in a 61 per cent increase in households requiring emergency accommodation, which far exceeds the available supply.
As of June 2025, the council had 162 households in emergency accommodation who were waiting for a move into temporary accommodation.
The initial £3million of borrowing is earmarked to purchase 20 properties, with a potential yearly saving of up to £535,000 from reducing the need for bed and breakfast and hotel rooms.
Opposition councillors supported the plans but said the Labour administration should go further.
Conservative group leader Cllr Baillie said the money could be used to speed up the return of voids – empty council properties that are in need of repairs.
Cllr George Percival said while the Liberal Democrats backed the initiative, they felt it was not ambitious enough.
He said: “It is an issue that we do need to deal with and we don’t think £3million is going to cover that.”
Cllr Matthew Renyard said the money invested in this area needed to be significantly increased.
The Green Party had large ambitions to develop new-build council-owned properties, Cllr Renyard added.
Cllr Letts said the local authority had to operate a multi-faceted strategy when it came to spending in the housing revenue account.
The cabinet member said: “You can’t just make a number up and say we would spend this money without saying where it comes from.
“The basic principle here is balance. We need to balance the HRA reserves in a reasonable and sensible way.
“We have to support decent homes standards, which unfortunately a lot of our properties are not in, we have to spend money on this sort of initiative and we also have to spend money on voids and making sure that doesn’t come into play.”
Meanwhile, cabinet approved borrowing £625,000 to match fund a £500,000 allocation from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to deliver three temporary accommodation properties for homeless households and one home for a family under the government’s Afghan resettlement programme.
The money from the Local Authority Housing Fund needs to be used to purchase the properties by the end of the current financial year.