How Eastbourne became the face of England's temporary accommodation crisis

Often referred to as ‘the Sunshine Coast’, just two short years ago, the seaside resort of Eastbourne was facing a rather bleak financial forecast – and homelessness was at the heart of it.

The local authority first sounded the alarm about its pending crisis in November 2023, revealing to more than 100 councils gathered in Eastbourne for an emergency District Councils Network summit, that it had to find an additional £2.6million to cover its temporary accommodation bill in 2022-23.

Between 2019-20 and 2021-22, Eastbourne Borough Council was spending around £2m a year on temporary and emergency accommodation. By 2023-24, this figure had rocketed to £5,291,717, with 49p from every £1 of council tax collected being spent on temporary accommodation, pushing the local authority to the brink.

In February 2024, the council issued an urgent plea to central government for exceptional financial support, warning that it could face bankruptcy without intervention as record numbers of people were forced into temporary accommodation.

Eventually, the council was given the financial aid it was seeking and, this February, announced to much fanfare that it had paid the loan back in full. But for Eastbourne, the housing crisis is far from over, with the council and its partners “working phenomenally hard” to “keep a lid on a simmering pot”.

So how did Eastbourne, which spent years trying to shake the untrendy ‘God’s waiting room’ moniker, find itself as the face of the temporary accommodation crisis instead?

According to the Lib-Dem-led council, a decade of Conservative rule and the government’s inability to look at the broader picture led to this now ‘baked-in’ housing crisis.

“We had 16 housing ministers in 13 years and that all fed into the chaos from central government,” says Cllr Peter Diplock, cabinet member for housing and homelessness at Eastbourne Borough Council (EBC). “There wasn’t a coherent plan, and that filtered down to the sharp end for the borough council, the housing authority, and our charity and voluntary sector partners.”

Since Eastbourne’s financial woes came to a head, Labour came to power, full of promises to “get Britain building again”. But one of the biggest things Labour can do to help local governments balance the books and avoid any future financial crisis, according to Cllr Diplock, is to overhaul the stagnant temporary accommodation reimbursement rate.

“At the moment, local authorities who provide housing can claim back some of the cost of temporary accommodation, but it’s based on local housing allowance rates from 2011, which simply bear no relevance to today’s rental payments,” he said. “That was one of our big asks, which government seems to have ignored.”

Another area where central government could offer more support, according to Cllr Diplock, is by helping struggling councils that find themselves under extra pressure from out-of-area housing placements.

“There’s the principle that out-of-area placements should be the last resort. That’s not got enough teeth for us,” he said. “We think large local authorities can ignore that, as they have done in the North West and parts of the South East as well.”

And it’s the actions of its coastal neighbour that Eastbourne has taken particular issue with.

In the aftermath of the pandemic, Eastbourne called Brighton and Hove City Council’s (BHCC) decision to house over 130 homeless people in the town without consultation an “unfair burden”. High-level talks between the two local authorities led to numbers falling to double figures in 2022.

But by late 2024, the numbers were creeping up again, and at the time, EBC told Big Issue it was “extremely concerned” about the increase. Cllr Diplock claims the city council “hasn’t particularly engaged” with EBC over the issue.

“It’s a bit like the big brother who just ignores what the little sibling says,” he said.

“The people that were being placed here, at least on paper, look to be the most vulnerable, the most complex, the ones who needed the most support. And from our perspective, we just couldn’t understand why those people were being pushed 20-odd miles down the coast when all of their support networks, all of their meetings with a GP or mental health support team, are all Brighton-based.”

He added: “We know that the logical outcome of this is that people do die because they are not provided with the support they need and would probably have if they were placed in area.”

Read more:

• Record-high number of people sleeping rough in England amid warning kids left homeless on streets
• Cost of housing homeless people in temporary accommodation soars to £2.8bn
• Family evicted from temporary housing after having grandparents over for a brew: ‘It blew my mind’

In response, BHCC told Big Issue that it was facing the same pressures as Eastbourne and pointed out that it was working to increase housing availability in the city, as reflected by falling figures. As of January 29th, there were 171 households placed in Eastbourne from Brighton, down from 198 in September 2025. In January 2025, the figure stood at 149.

In comparison, Eastbourne’s own out-of-area placements are in the “low double digits” and are often due to domestic abuse cases.

Retaliating against Cllr Diplock’s claims, Councillor Gill Williams, cabinet member for housing at BHCC, said: “Like many UK councils, Brighton and Hove is grappling with an unprecedented scale of need. The ongoing claims being made against our council are wildly inaccurate, extremely unfair and undermine the work our partners and housing teams do to support people in a housing crisis.

“It is also incredibly disappointing to see elected politicians use dehumanising language when discussing people’s lives and experiences. It does nothing to help address the complex issues we’re facing.”

She added that BHCC prioritised keeping people within Brighton and Hove and returning people in emergency placements back to the city as soon as possible. She insisted that they worked closely with neighbouring local authorities.

“We have a team dedicated to supporting people in temporary accommodation,” Cllr Williams added. “They take a risk-based approach to visiting people living in temporary accommodation and monitoring the accommodation provided, and we’ve recently increased the frequency of many of these visits.”

Cllr Diplock told Big Issue that Eastbourne was “hugely sympathetic” and recognised that Brighton was in the same boat with regards to housing supply, adding: “We’re not throwing stones for the sake of throwing stones. But there has to be a more cohesive and coherent approach.”

Unfortunately, out-of-area placements that separate people from their support networks, wherever they may be located, have led to temporary accommodation placements breaking down and contributed to a rise in rough sleeping in Eastbourne in recent months.

“If someone’s temporary accommodation placement does break down, they will often then just stay in Eastbourne rather than go back to Brighton. So then we have to try to find a housing solution for them,” says Roland Brown, CEO of Kingdom Way Trust.

The charitable organisation provides emergency accommodation and supported accommodation for a small number of residents for up to two years. Kingdom Way Trust supports homeless people even if they don’t have a link to Eastbourne.

“Primarily, the accommodation that we have to offer is shared accommodation, so the complexity with regards to mental health needs and substance misuse means that there’s quite a high percentage of people that we’re not currently able to house and support,” he said.

However, unlike the council, Brown does not lay all the blame at Brighton’s door, pointing out that some people the organisation encounters are coming to Eastbourne from even further afield, either placed by their local authority or rough sleepers heading to the South Coast of their own accord.

Although the temporary accommodation crisis has proved an enormous headache for Eastbourne, Brown argues that, ironically, the town may simply be a victim of its own success as word spreads among the homeless community about the good provision of services offered by local charities.

“It has certainly been suggested as a reason, and I wouldn’t like to argue against it,” he added.

“But the converse side of that is Eastbourne is a very expensive place to then try and find a rented room.

“They would be much better off going up to Newcastle to find somewhere that’s more affordable than staying in Eastbourne.”

But ultimately, the big problem for Eastbourne boils down to the same issue facing Brighton and other towns and cities across England – the demand for social housing far outweighs supply.

“One of our biggest challenges is that once we’ve given somebody a place in emergency housing, with the aim to move them on within three months, finding affordable and accessible accommodation for them to move on to is getting harder and harder,” says Brown.

“The stagnation within temporary accommodation is also down to the fact that there just aren’t enough council social housing places available.”

Eastbourne Borough Council is already taking steps to tackle the housing shortage in the borough. EBC is one of just 33% of local authorities that have built social housing in each of the last five years, something that Cllr Diplock says the council is proud to be a part of.

But Eastbourne can’t build and buy its way out of the temporary accommodation crisis alone.

“We will continue trying to work with Brighton to tackle these out-of-area placements and the knock-on effects that those placements have. And again, we continue to lobby government for a more cohesive, more strategic approach,” says Cllr Diplock.

He added: “You can’t blame people for being homeless. It’s not their fault. We’re all only three paycheques away from it. We know that we want to help people and we do our absolute best to play our part.

“The government can step up and lead.”

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