More than 1,100 families in Kingston upon Thames are currently living in temporary accommodation. That is not a footnote in a housing report — it is a significant share of the borough's population existing in legal limbo, often far from their children's schools, their support networks, and sometimes far from Kingston itself.
The council talks about this crisis in the language of strategy and investment. But what does it actually feel like from the inside? And what should residents be asking?
Temporary accommodation (TA) is housing provided by the council to households it has a legal duty to house under the Housing Act 1996. If you present as homeless and the council accepts a duty towards you — because you are unintentionally homeless and in priority need — it must find you somewhere to live while a longer-term solution is sought.
"Somewhere to live" can mean many things: a council-owned flat, a hostel, a nightly-paid bed and breakfast, a leased property managed by a housing association, or a privately rented flat procured by the council. The quality, location, and stability of that housing varies enormously.
The point is this: temporary accommodation is not social housing. It is not permanent. And for many families, it is not temporary either.
Kingston, like all English councils, uses a banding system to prioritise households on its housing register. The bands typically run from highest to lowest urgency — with households facing a genuine housing crisis, serious medical need, or statutory homelessness duty sitting in the highest bands.
Being placed in temporary accommodation does not automatically put you at the top of the list for a permanent social home. You are assessed, banded, and then you wait — bidding on available properties through the council's choice-based lettings scheme.
The uncomfortable truth is that the number of households waiting far exceeds the number of social homes becoming available each year. Turnover in social housing stock is slow. New supply is limited. And so families in temporary accommodation can wait years — not months — for a permanent offer.
Kingston Council has not published a single average waiting time figure that covers all bands, and any headline number would mask the reality: a family in the highest priority band may wait months; a family in a lower band may wait the better part of a decade.
When Kingston cannot find suitable temporary accommodation within the borough — which happens regularly, given the cost and scarcity of housing in southwest London — it places families outside Kingston's boundaries.
This can mean placements in other London boroughs, or beyond the M25 entirely. For a family with children in local schools, a placement in, say, Croydon or Sutton is not merely inconvenient. It can mean long daily commutes for children, disruption to education, and severance from the community support that many homeless households depend on.
The council has a duty to consider the disruption such placements cause — particularly to schooling — but the legal threshold for what counts as "suitable" accommodation is lower than most residents would expect.
If your family has been placed out of borough, you are entitled to ask the council to review whether that placement meets the suitability standard. Many families do not know this.
Kingston Council has committed £23 million to a property buy-back programme — purchasing former council homes that were sold under Right to Buy and returning them to the social housing stock.
In theory, this is straightforwardly good. Every home bought back is a permanent social home that would not otherwise exist, and it reduces dependence on expensive nightly-paid temporary accommodation.
But there are questions worth asking.
How many homes does £23 million actually buy in Kingston? Property prices in the borough are among the highest in outer London. At current market rates, £23 million might secure 30 to 50 properties — a meaningful but modest contribution relative to the 1,100-plus households currently in temporary accommodation.
How long will this take? Buying individual properties on the open market is slow. Refurbishment adds further delay before homes are lettable. The council has not published a completion timeline broken down by year.
Who benefits first? Buy-back properties will enter the housing register allocation pool. Families already in temporary accommodation will need to bid on them like any other property. The scheme does not create a fast-track route out of TA for those currently in it.
None of this means the scheme is wrong. It almost certainly represents better value than continuing to pay nightly rates for bed-and-breakfast accommodation. But residents deserve more granular information about delivery.
Kingston is running a projected budget gap of £18 million over the four years to 2030, according to its own Medium Term Financial Strategy. Council reserves stand at £14.2 million — less than the gap the council is trying to close.
At the same time, the Band D council tax bill for 2026/27 is £2,608.12 per year — a rise of £119.77, or 4.99%, on last year's £2,488.35. That increase is partly driven by the cost pressures homelessness and temporary accommodation place on council budgets.
Temporary accommodation is one of the most expensive services a council can run. Nightly-paid accommodation, procurement staff, legal duties, and housing support all carry significant cost. Every family stuck in TA for two years rather than one is not just a human failure — it is a financial one.
The buy-back scheme, if it reduces nightly-paid TA use, could pay for itself over time. But that argument only holds if homes are acquired quickly, at reasonable prices, and allocated efficiently.
If you or someone you know is in Kingston's temporary accommodation system, here are the things the council is not always proactive about communicating:
The 1,100-plus figure for Kingston families in temporary accommodation is striking. But a number alone tells us very little. What we need to know is: how many are placed out of borough? What are the real waiting times by band? How many buy-back properties have been secured so far, at what cost, and when will they be let?
These are not unreasonable questions. They are basic accountability questions — and residents deserve direct answers.
Use Council Clarity to message your Kingston councillor directly. Ask them what progress has been made on the buy-back scheme, how many families are currently placed out of borough, and what the council is doing to reduce wait times for the highest-priority households. The more residents who ask, the harder these questions become to ignore.
You can find your ward councillor and send them a message at Council Clarity. It takes two minutes — and it matters.
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