Homelesssness Archives

Visualisation of a new meanwhile neighbourhood, built quickly using RCKa’s prototype modular construction. Credit: RCKa

In 2023, the G15 group of London’s biggest housing associations convened an emergency summit to address the rapidly worsening temporary accommodation crisis across the city. It was dubbed ‘Project 123’ in response to the grim statistic that, at the time, one in every 23 children in London was homeless.

A year later, the name had already become an anachronism: in just 12 months, the ratio had increased to one in 21 kids.

At the time of writing, London’s councils are spending a combined £5.5 million each and every day on housing families in temporary housing – much of it in B&Bs, emergency overnight accommodation and hotel rooms – up from £4 million a day a year ago. Large numbers of families have been forced to move to homes not in their own neighbourhoods, but scattered across the country; miles from the family and social networks on which they rely.

The cost of housing families in need is becoming an existential burden on already-stretched councils. But, behind the numbers, are a hundred thousand individual tragedies: toddlers living in damp and mouldy flats; youngsters forced to share rooms with parents and siblings; teenagers entering higher education having spent their entire school careers living in hotel rooms. The lives diminished and the opportunities squandered by our inability to build safe, affordable homes is a scandal and we should be ashamed that we have allowed it to happen.

In the first quarter of 2025, London built just 347 affordable homes. Even our private-sector housebuilding was pitiful: only 2,158 homes were built in the first half of this year, just 5 per cent of the government’s target for the city. The reasons for this shortfall are myriad. Following years of extraordinary construction inflation, in much of the country it’s impossible to build homes for anything less than they’re worth. The glacial pace of the Building Safety Regulator has replaced the planning system as the principal drag on large housing regeneration schemes.

Local authorities have a statutory duty to provide accommodation to families who present themselves as homeless. Councils are already under massive financial strain, but the extraordinary costs of temporary accommodation are mind-blowing. The annual cost is now nearly £3 billion – more than we’re spending on building new affordable homes. Much of this cash is pouring into the pockets of private landlords and hotel chains, despite much of the accommodation being substandard and often dangerous. We clearly need solutions to this crisis, quickly and efficiently. But, as we can’t build permanent homes, what else can we do?

During the early days of the Covid pandemic, the government introduced emergency planning powers that allowed health authorities to build hospitals and morgues without following the conventional and convoluted planning process. The nation deemed the situation sufficiently dire that the need to quickly deploy emergency infrastructure justified avoiding the bureaucracy that such buildings would be subject to in normal times.

As it turned out, these Nightingale Hospitals were not required, but they provide a useful example of how the state can step up to combat major health emergencies when necessary. The current homelessness crisis is no less of an emergency and requires a similarly vigorous response.

What London does not lack is space. There are car parks, stalled development sites, vacant plots and redundant scraps of land in abundance across the city. Each and every one could be used to help alleviate the tragedy of the homelessness crisis. With a bit of determination and creativity we could rapidly deploy new homes, at speed and at scale, on these sites within a few months. Consider for a moment the profound impact on the lives of thousands of Londoners that would make.

Kevin Fenton Mews, by ZED PODS for London Borough of Bromley. Credit: ZED PODS

Many housing solutions already exist. In south-east London, modular specialist ZED PODS has installed 25 zero-carbon homes above a Bromley car park, retaining four out of five spaces below.

And in Cardiff, which has been for some time a pioneer of modular housing solutions, Wates and RSHP have deployed award-winning permanent houses using @Home’s timber-based, carbon-positive offsite construction system (the use of which is perversely prohibited in London, due to grant funding restrictions).

Crofts Street by RSHP for Wates and Cardiff Living, manufactured by @Home. Photo: Joas Souza

Over the past year, RCKa has been working on a prototype home that we believe could help deliver these objectives. Working with main contractor Wates and offsite specialist Rollalong, we have developed a high-quality home which can be installed anywhere in London in under two hours.

Compliant with space standards, providing a generous two- or three-bedroom apartment, this modular dwelling is entirely made in Rollalong’s Dorset factory and brought to site in three or four separate parts, which can be assembled for considerably less expense than a traditionally built home.

Interior of RCKa and Rollalong’s modular home, showing the main living area and bedroom. Credit: Wates

Despite the speed and cost benefits, this is in no way inferior to a permanent home. With a design life of more than 60 years, in some respects these dwellings are better than much of the new housing stock that has been built across the country in recent years. How many new-build homes do you know of that feature a 2.9m ceiling, as does ours? A deep knowledge of what goes into each module allows the materials to be recovered at end of life and the steel frame can be repurposed for other uses, such as classrooms, site accommodation, or even another home.

Some compromises are necessary to achieve these homes at that pace, however. The homes lack private external amenity space, so we will need exemplary placemaking and high-quality external space and play areas to compensate. Their location is vital, too. They will need to be close to public transport and local amenities, such as shops and schools. Community space should be included and the arrangement of the homes on the site will be vital to embed a sense of belonging, security and community.

London’s Deputy Mayor for Housing and Residential Development, Tom Copley, opens RCKa and Rollalong’s temporary accommodation module outside City Hall in August 2025. Credit: RCKa

The country has the technical capability to deliver these homes at scale, but the regulatory and policy environment needs to adapt. Permitted development regulations must be expanded, as they were during the pandemic, to allow us to deploy meanwhile homes without the inherent complexities of full planning permission. Inherent in this are dimensional parameters which should protect neighbouring properties, and appropriate locations will need to be identified close to social infrastructure and public transport. Councils need to adopt progressive procurement too, encouraging direct awards and comparing cost submissions not between different bidders, but rather with the amounts currently being squandered on hotels and private landlords.

The pandemic was brought to an end when the pharmaceutical industry mobilised to deliver a vaccine in a fraction of the normal time, and this subsequently led to a flurry of innovative life-changing therapies in other areas of medicine. In a similar way, a co-ordinated national strategy to industrialise housing could address the urgent need for emergency accommodation while building a robust manufacturing sector which is prepped to deliver the permanent homes the government has committed to in the coming years.

Over 130,000 households spent last night in temporary accommodation, up by 14,000 since last year. We have all the tools we need to put this right. There’s no excuse for us not to use them.

This article was published in the Architects’ Journal in December 2026.

At the end of 2024 London boroughs were spending £4m each and every day on housing families in temporary accommodation—nearly £1.5bn every year. One in 23 of London’s children are growing up homeless, many in substandard converted offices, mouldy privately-rented flats, or overcrowded hotel rooms without private kitchens. Many young adults have spent their entire primary and secondary education living in precarious circumstances, their student rooms now providing the most stable accommodation they can remember.

Aside from the extraordinary financial implications of the worsening housing crisis, the human cost is profound. At a time when public finances are under a greater strain than they have been in generations, scandalous sums of money are cascading into the pockets of private landlords and hoteliers. Inadequate and unsafe housing leads to poor health outcomes, putting a strain on an already overstretched NHS—but the real tragedy is the lives that are diminished, the opportunities thwarted, and the potential of future generations squandered. The homelessness crisis is a national emergency and a stain on our country. We must take bold steps to confront it.

During the COVID 19 pandemic, the country mobilised to build a series of temporary hospitals at speed. The government adopted emergency measures that allowed the bypassing of conventional planning processes so that health needs could be prioritised. The public and private sector came together to quickly design, install and operate the so-called Nightingale Hospitals under emergency amendments to the Town & Country Planning Act which granted specified healthcare bodies permitted development powers to construct or convert buildings for a range of uses including hospitals, mortuaries and testing units, whilst avoiding the need for expensive, time-consuming planning applications. It was a remarkable response.

A similarly ambitious approach is now required to address the housing crisis. The public emergency of substandard temporary accommodation deserves to be treated with the same urgency as the pandemic. In the end the Nightingale Hospitals were not required—the housing emergency is real and present, and has similarly profound long-term implications.

Permitted development rights should be extended to allow the installation of temporary accommodation on vacant plots of land in appropriate locations, with a time limit of no more than five years before permanent development or its return to a pristine state. Naturally, safeguards must be included to ensure that the homes are of a sufficient standard: compliance with Building Regulations to ensure thermal comfort, accessibility and safety; and broad compliance with Nationally Described Space Standards, although perhaps a concession should be made to allow dwellings 85% of the total required area to optimise the use of land.

Homes delivered under this method should have easy access to the public transport network, and so located no more than 800m from a station; also close to local amenities such as high streets and social infrastructure. To avoid large numbers of people in need being placed in areas already suffering from high levels of deprivation, an impact assessment should be carried out to understand how these temporary homes might affect the wellbeing of existing residents. These powers could also include an upper limit on the number of bed spaces within a single location: 250 would seem reasonable. Dimensional parameters should also be established: a similar Class TA Permitted Development Right already allows the Crown to erect certain structures within closed defence sites provided that they are below a height threshold and a sufficient distance from neighbouring homes.

Importantly, the homes should be demountable and capable of being relocated elsewhere with ease. This will ensure that a five-year lifespan is achievable and that the homes are designed and manufactured with appropriate quality and robustness. This would provide a boost to the UK’s beleaguered modular manufacturing industry too.

Consideration should also be given to the siting of new accommodation, with the provision of external amenity space and play equipment ensuring that these temporary developments meet the needs of the children and young people who will live there.

There is no reason whatsoever that the quality of these homes should be in any way compromised: there would be little sense in moving families from precarious lodgings to overcrowded and substandard accommodation elsewhere.

There are thousands of hectares of vacant land that could be temporarily repurposed for this use: surface car parks next to suburban train stations, disused golf courses, council estates awaiting regeneration and brownfield land awaiting permanent development which is delayed due to uncertainty over viability or forming part of a later phase of regeneration.

In the case of the homelessness crisis, it is likely that councils will be the ones applying to themselves for permission, but given the nature of the emergency it cannot be allowed that unnecessary interference from external interests can delay or otherwise frustrate the construction of these dwellings, provided that they meet the pre-determined criteria sketched out above. Limited and specific permitted development rules would help achieve this.

Work already undertaken in this area has demonstrated that it is possible to install temporary homes at between half and two-thirds of the cost of conventional affordable housing, and the relocatable nature of the modules enables the homes to be either repurposed elsewhere as permanent homes or to continue their life providing emergency accommodation for those in need. Councils across the country have already demonstrated how, with the appropriate supply chain and procurement processes in place, public sector temporary housing can be comfortable, safe and cost-effective. We should learn from these lessons and apply them at scale. The potential cost savings to the public purse are also vast: the typical payback for a temporary dwelling can be as little as a year.

We owe it to our fellow citizens who are not adequately housed to provide them with a safe and secure home in which to raise their children. Their needs should take precedence over those who already benefit from a place to live. Time-limited permitted development powers could provide a way.

This article was featured as part of a Homes for Britain policy pamphlet “Brownfield Planning Passports: Fast-Track to Growth” published on 10 February 2025.