[Picture taken during a recent visit to Julian House in Manvers Street. Wera Hobhouse MP (L) with (from left) Julian House: Service Manager Sarah Barnes, Team Leader Rory Cozzolino, and CEO Helen Bedser.
The Government may have made a £9.1 million announcement for winter homelessness support in the South West, but Bath’s MP Wera Hobhouse has called on ministers to do much more to deliver real, long-term solutions to end homelessness – not just delivering short-term fixes.
With record numbers of households now living in temporary accommodation across England, including nearly 170,000 children, this latest Government announcement, says Wera Hobhouse, falls far short of addressing the scale of the housing crisis, which many councils are struggling to manage against a backdrop of budget cuts and spiralling costs of supporting families in need of temporary accommodation.
Official figures show that local authorities now face a £2.8 billion bill for temporary accommodation in 2024–25, up from £2.3 billion last year, a cost many fear is unsustainable. Meanwhile, over 1.3 million households are on social housing waiting lists.
Wera Hobhouse, Liberal Democrat MP for Bath, said:
“It’s heartbreaking that so many families and children in Bath will face this winter without a safe, warm place to call home. The Government must step up to end homelessness once and for all.”
The Bath MP’s comments follow the shocking news from last week that 1,611 people died while homeless in 2024 – a 9% rise from the year before. 147 of these were in the South West, the 3rd highest number of deaths per region in the UK.
Mrs Hobhouse recently paid a visit to local charity Julian House, which works as a lifeline tackling homelessness across the South West. Julian House has been delivering an off-the-streets accommodation service on Manvers Street for people sleeping rough in Bath for close to 40 years. In the last year alone, it has provided 96,816 beds across all its services, supported 371 individuals who were sleeping rough to move on to more stable, secure accommodation, and supported 2,740 vulnerable people to begin their journey to independence and security.
The hostel itself has been at 115% capacity for the past year, with a waiting list. All 20 pods are full, with all available space given over to sleeping areas, even resorting to setting up ‘sit-up’ beds in the communal area, in order to meet demand.
During her visit, the Bath MP heard how their lease on the basement of Manvers Street Baptist Church will end in August 2026, and they are now in a race against time to find a suitable replacement to ensure continuity of their vital service.
Mrs Hobhouse says this new funding from the Government is welcome, but given the scale of the crisis in the South West, it is simply not enough. She continued:
“We are still waiting on a new homelessness strategy, which should provide more support for councils, including B&NES and organisations like Julian House, to tackle the huge rise in families in temporary accommodation. The Government must also set a statutory target for building social homes to tackle the 1.3 million households on waiting lists.
“We Liberal Democrats will continue to urge the Government to be ambitious. That includes building the social homes we need – 150,000 social homes annually – abolishing Section 21 no-fault evictions, and setting out a strategy to end all forms of homelessness. No more should families be forced to sleep rough and without their basic right to shelter.”
