Council's housing bill for B&B accommodation rises to £6.2m

SWANSEA council spends more than £120,000 a week on bed and breakfast accommodation for people in need of housing, latest figures have shown.

- RICHARD YOULE

The eye-watering £6.26m bill for 2024-25, which works out as £120,384 per week, dwarfs the £2.5m cost in 2022-23 and the £4.32m outlay in 2023-24.

The council said the net cost was actually a lot lower as it has been able, for example, to claw back some money from the Welsh Government but its overall share of the expenditure is rising.

The situation in Swansea is far from unique. Councils everywhere are having to spend more to provide people in need of a home with somewhere to live and bed and breakfasts are part of the solution.

An Audit Wales report this week said the main causes were a lack of housing generally, local housing allowance - the housing benefit entitlement for private tenants on welfare - being well below market rate, cost-of-living pressures more widely, and a shortage of key workers to prevent homelessness. Another factor was a Welsh Government policy during Covid to ensure everyone had access to a place to live.

Some bed and breakfasts in Swansea's Oystermouth Road accommodate people in need of a home, including recently released prisoners.

One man, sitting outside the Oyster Hotel on Oystermouth Road, said he'd spent 18 months in jail before being placed last December in a nearby bed and breakfast. Two months ago he was moved to the Oyster Hotel.

"Coming from prison it wasn't so bad for me it was a step up," said the 35-year-old, who asked not to be named. "If I'd be living in a flat it would have been a step down.

"The staff here are better than at the previous place, they are more helpful. And there is a microwave we can use. You get to know some of the other residents. Some are all right but a few are d***heads."