People staying in bed-and-breakfasts (B&Bs) or other boarded accommodation who are doing so through lack of an alternative.

Receipt of housing benefit is used as a proxy measure for lack of choice - claimants have a low income and are therefore not likely to be there by choice whereas non-claimants will mostly have higher incomes and thus will be in the boarded accommodation through choice (e.g. as a temporary measure while changing jobs).

These people can be described as being homeless because they have no permanent housing and no security of tenure (i.e. they can be asked to leave and have no redress).  Because they also have low income, this situation is unlikely to be through choice and is also unlikely to change in the near future.

High - if they applied to their local authority, such people would appear to qualify to be officially recognised as homeless even if not judged to be in priority need

Some of those in boarded accommodation are self-placed whilst others have been placed there by their local authorities.  Those placed by local authorities comprise a mixture of statutorily homeless in priority need, asylum seekers placed before NASS, and social services placements.

38,000 at any point in time.

At any one time, there are around 48,000 benefit unit boarders across Great Britain in B&Bs and other boarded accommodation who are on low incomes (i.e. claiming housing benefit).  Of these, around 38,000 are private boarders and 10,000 are local authority boarders. ^[1]

Local authority placements that are living in B&Bs because they are statutorily homeless and thus in priority need, should be excluded from the estimates on the grounds that the local authority has judged this to be an appropriate response to their situation.  However, this proportion is not known and thus, to be conservative in the estimation, all local authority placements have been excluded.

Note that the DWP definition of boarded accommodation includes people staying in hostels, residential homes and houses with multiple occupation (HMOs).  The DWP data does not, however, distinguish between these groups and those in B&Bs.

The vast majority of households in B&Bs and other boarded accommodation are single adults without dependent children.^[2] So, the estimated number of people is similar to the estimated number of households.

DWP Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit Management System for May 2005.

Medium - the estimated numbers are considered to be robust but the use of receipt of housing benefit as a proxy for lack of choice is somewhat arbitrary and arguably somewhat conservative.  The numbers are also likely to be an underestimation due to the total exclusion of all local authority placed boarders.