Labour representatives call for urgent action on homelessness across Dagenham and Rainham.

‘Shelter produced statistics that bring shame on the Tory Government. At the end of December 2023 there were 105,750 households with 309,000 people homeless in England’-Jon Cruddas MP

Jon Cruddas MP and Labour’s Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Dagenham and Rainham, Margaret Mullane,have commented on the shocking levels of homelessness affecting Havering and Barking and Dagenham and the terrible impact across England. Jon and Margaret have put forward the need for urgent action to bring the problem under control and relieve the suffering being experienced by families as well as reduce the financial pressures on local councils.

Jon told the Havering Daily:“Shelter produced statistics that bring shame on the Tory Government. At the end of December 2023 there were 105,750 households with 309,000 people homeless in England, including 140,000 children – that’s an increase of 14% in just over a year.

There are so many shameful aspects to this, for example the delay in bringing forward the ban on no fault evictions of private tenants has resulted in an increase in these evictions of 49% in the last 12 months.

Housing and the failure to tackle homelessness is probably the biggest failure of this Tory Government, and that’s saying something with their record. But it’s no wonder, they have had 16 Housing Ministers in 14 years. Housing is a crucial issue to the lives of people and it simply hasn’t been given the attention it deserves.”

Margaret said: “Homelessness and temporary accommodation is reaching crisis levels in Barking and Dagenham and Havering. In Barking and Dagenham the number of households in temporary accommodation is at 17.2 for every 1,000 population, for Havering the level is 8.5 households per 1,000 population. Beyond these shocking numbers locally we have significant hidden homelessness with people having to resort to ‘sofa surfing’ with friends and relatives and problems of acute overcrowding.

The number of families in temporary accommodation is one of the main reasons that both councils are desperately struggling with their budgets. 

We urgently need action on housing that includes a major programme of council house building to help ease pressures rather than high cost homes that local families are priced out of, an immediate end to no fault evictions and a clamp down on rogue landlords. These are my priorities and if elected to represent Dagenham and Rainham, I will be making these clear in Parliament.”

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