This article by Katharine Swindells, Deputy Features Editor for Inside Housing and shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Reporting Homelessness, reports on the numbers of children living in temporary accommodation in the UK. 

Inside Housing has reported widely on the damaging impact that living in temporary accommodation has on toddlers and babies, particularly those living in hotels and B&B accommodation.

While the government does collect and publish the numbers of children overall in temporary accommodation, local authorities are not required to differentiate between a teenager and a baby.

Our dataset, below, fills in that information gap.

Inside Housing filed Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to every local authority in the UK requesting details of households with children aged under five living in temporary accommodation. Keep reading to see the latest data on under-fives living in temporary accommodation, broken down by local authorities across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

How many children under five are in temporary accommodation in the UK?

These calculations are correct as of March 2025, with data referring to September 2024.

Extrapolating our data, we estimate that in England, Scotland and Wales, as of September 2024 there were 38,900 households in temporary accommodation with children aged under five.

In England alone, we estimate that there are 35,900 households with young children in temporary accommodation in September 2024, and of these 3,500 are in B&B accommodation.

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Where in the UK has the highest number of toddlers and babies in temporary accommodation and B&Bs?

The table below can be used to explore the numbers of families with young children in temporary accommodation and B&B accommodation in local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales.

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Some local authorities are quicker to move families on from B&B temporary accommodation than others. The table below includes all local authorities where the number of households with children aged under five in temporary accommodation totals more than 50.

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Where are numbers of under-fives in temporary accommodation rising?

As temporary accommodation numbers continue to rise across the country, in many places, the number of families with young children in this situation is rising, too.

Many local authorities have seen temporary accommodation usage climb significantly in recent times, leaving them scrambling to find suitable housing. The table below includes all local authorities where the number of households with children younger than five years old in temporary accommodation totals more than 50.

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Which UK local authorities record data on young children in temporary accommodation?

Almost a third of local authorities do not collect or refused to provide data on the numbers of households with under-fives in temporary accommodation. The map shows which local authorities provided the data.

Among the local authorities that said they do not collect or were unable to provide the data were some that have among the country’s highest levels of temporary accommodation usage.

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How long are young children stuck in temporary accommodation?

Increasingly, families are stuck in temporary accommodation for weeks or even months on end. Inside Housing analysed the FOI data to find out what percentage of families with young children had been in temporary accommodation for a long period of time.

It is illegal to place families with children in B&B accommodation – sharing bathrooms or kitchen facilities with other households – for more than six weeks.

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Source: FOI data obtained by Inside Housing Map data: © Crown copyright and database right 2023 Created with Datawrapper

The Northern Ireland Housing Executive also said it could not provide the data, as it “does not hold the information in the format requested” and directed Inside Housing to view its public datasets.

A Housing Executive spokesperson said: “We may not use the same methods and systems for data collection and reporting as other jurisdictions and therefore we are unable to provide a like-for-like comparison for any dataset.

“The Department for Communities website contains some information on numbers of children in temporary accommodation at a given point in time, as we referenced in our response to the Freedom of Information request.”

Methodology

Inside Housing filed Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to every local authority in the UK requesting details of households with children aged under five living in temporary accommodation, and to the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, which is responsible for homelessness in the jurisdiction. The national estimates were calculated by cross referencing the FOI data with the most recent public government data on the numbers of households with children (of all ages) in temporary accommodation.

This data was last updated in March 2025 to add the quarterly data for September 2024.

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This article was originally published in Inside Housing - to use the interactive maps and latest information, please visit their website. 

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