Council facing bankruptcy as their town has become ‘an asylum dispersal city by the back door’

An emergency meeting of council leaders has been held as many councils are facing bankruptcy due to the rising costs of preventing homelessness.

Stephen Holt, Liberal Democrat leader of Eastbourne Borough Council told 50 council leaders in Westminster that Downing Street must step in to sop a “national crisis.”

Holt warned, “Simply put, without Government intervention to tackle the tremendous cost of temporary accommodation and homelessness, the next step for many councils of all stripes is emergency budgets and section 114 notices.”

Michael Jones, Labour leader of Crawley Borough Council, said rising costs and homelessness is “accelerating,” the then warned the town has now become “an asylum dispersal city by the back door” that is now driving “new demands” on them.

He said that the frozen funding regime, “is simply unjust and needs rectifying now.

“This crisis in temporary accommodation is a challenge that would have been insurmountable even for the most well-resourced councils at the best of times, so I don’t think it is over-dramatic given the pressures facing councils to tell the Government that they are presiding over the end of local government if they fail to take the urgent action needed.”