Wandsworth Council now spends almost £40m a year on homelessness, more than twice as much as three years ago, as it prepares to nearly double council tax.
Council tax payers cover most of it. After government grants, the council’s own share came to about £195 on every Band D bill in the borough last year, out of the £507 on each bill that goes to the council.
The council says government cuts, rising to £84m a year by 2029, are forcing council tax to nearly double next April. Its homelessness bill alone is almost half that sum, and has grown by £23m a year in three years.
Yet the council has not said where that money goes. When Putney.news asked last December how many families it places in temporary homes each year, and how it spends the government’s homelessness money, it took nearly a year to reply. It answered neither question, and sent us to government websites that do not have the answers.
Behind the bill are 4,314 households living in temporary accommodation, including more than 4,400 children. That is 3% of all the households in Wandsworth. For its size, the borough has three and a half times as many households in temporary homes as Merton or Richmond next door.
Every council tax payer in Wandsworth is paying for a system that houses 3% of households, and that has grown three times as fast here as across London. Is everyone’s council tax going up to pay for a system that is not working?
We read the council’s own papers so you don’t have to.
Members can read why Wandsworth’s homelessness bill has more than doubled, in the council’s own words and figures, and where homeless families are being sent. They can also see what the council’s main plan will save, and the claim its housing chief made to justify it.
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What members get from this story
- Why the bill has more than doubled, in the council’s own words
- Where homeless families are sent, and why most did not choose it
- What the council’s main plan will save, and the claim made to justify it
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What the council will not say
Putney.news asked the council for its figures last December: how many families it places in temporary homes each year, and how it spends the government’s homelessness money. It took 324 days to reply, when the law gives it 20 working days. It did not give the figures, though it has them. It gave links to government websites instead. It did not even check them: the figures are not there. For our other questions, on rough sleeping and on applications, the data it pointed to does hold the answers.
The council’s own papers, going back years, show it has them. Its guidelines on temporary accommodation, published in 2023, say it placed 1,204 households in 2022-23, around 23 a week. A later edition put the figure for 2024-25 at 777. That edition is no longer on the council’s website. A paper to its Cabinet in July, three months before it replied to us, set out what homelessness has cost it each year.
The council said its funding figures were in the government’s annual accounts. They are not. Five years of those accounts list no homelessness grants for individual councils. Wandsworth appears once, for a Levelling Up project in Nine Elms.
The government does publish what it gives each council, elsewhere. It allocated Wandsworth £9.4m in its main homelessness grant last year, up from £5.4m four years earlier. The council has not said what it spent it on.
Three days after its reply to us, the council told residents its spending on temporary accommodation had risen “almost 700% since 2020”. It could only say that if it had the yearly figures.
So why has it not given them? Earlier this year a resident’s question about the housing queue took seven months to answer, with the same holding reply sent three times. The ombudsman has ruled against the council’s homelessness service three more times this month.
We put these findings to the council and to Cllr Corner, with seven questions, including why the reply took 324 days, whether it will now provide the figures, and what lies behind “almost 700%”. We will add their answers when we receive them.
What you can do
If you are homeless or about to be: call Wandsworth Council’s housing options team on 020 8871 6161, or Shelter’s free helpline on 0808 800 4444. Shelter’s advice pages explain your rights.
If you are experiencing domestic abuse: the National Domestic Abuse Helpline is free and open 24 hours a day on 0808 2000 247.
Have your say on who gets social housing: the council’s consultation on its allocation scheme closes on 18 January 2027.
Ask the council yourself: freedom of information requests go to FOIW@richmondandwandsworth.gov.uk. The law gives it 20 working days to answer.
