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Search the Public Notice PortalMoney 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.”
Using the funds to buy more temporary accommodation would “reduce our reliance on hotels”, he added.
Mr Reavill continued: “We will revisit the Drakes Drive/Frobisher Road garage site project in 2026/27, to see whether we can develop a more bespoke temporary accommodation option on that site.
“We’re exploring all opportunities, inside and outside the district, to try to increase our [temporary] accommodation supply to reduce not only the financial cost of using hotels but the human cost of customers being placed in hotels.”
A total of 227 households in St Albans are currently staying in temporary accommodation, including those in hotels.
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.
“We are trying to look at every single social and technological and procedural process to try and manage demand and optimise our supply.
“The officers are using quite creative epaproaches to try and give people affordable but dignified temporary accommodation.
“To put a family into hotel accommodation absolutely magnifies their stress, and that’s not something we want to continue.”
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.
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