With thousands of households living in temporary accommodation across the Midlands, local authorities face increasing pressure to secure housing quickly. But speed cannot come at the expense of suitability. When accommodation places families far from schools, support networks or medical treatment, important legal questions arise.
Suitability remains one of the most significant issues in homelessness decision-making. As local authorities across the region continue to face growing demand for temporary accommodation, the challenge is no longer simply finding somewhere for a homeless applicant to stay. The question is whether the accommodation provided is genuinely suitable for that particular household and its circumstances.
Local authorities are required to assess suitability on a case-by-case basis. This exercise extends well beyond identifying vacant stock. It requires proper consideration of household composition, medical needs, affordability, location, safeguarding concerns and the applicant's overall ability to maintain the placement. If those matters are not adequately addressed, decisions will often be open to challenge.
Location and Distance
One of the most recurring issues across the Midlands concerns the location of placements. In the event households are placed outside their local area, or at a substantial distance from schools, employment, treatment providers, or established family support networks, legitimate concerns become apparent and arise as to suitability. This affects applicants across Birmingham, Coventry, Wolverhampton, Nottingham, Leicester and surrounding areas, where continuity of schooling, proximity to employment, and proper access to caring arrangements can be decisive factors.
Families and Temporary Accommodation
Families in temporary accommodation face particular difficulties across the Midlands. Suitable family-sized properties are often in short supply, and many households find themselves placed in accommodation that lacks adequate space, privacy, cooking facilities or basic stability. Repeated moves between different placements disrupts schooling, healthcare and family life; and for households with young children or additional support needs, the consequences of that instability can be serious and lasting.
Medical and Accessibility Needs
Medical and accessibility needs are too often treated as secondary considerations when they should be central to any suitability assessment. A placement that is technically available but lacks lift access for an applicant with a mobility impairment, or that is located at a distance from ongoing treatment or specialist support, is not suitable because it is vacant. The same applies to mental health needs; shared or isolated accommodation can materially worsen an applicant's condition, and that risk cannot simply be noted and moved on from.
Affordability
Affordability is not just a question of whether the rent can be met. The true cost of a placement includes utilities, transport, childcare and the other day-to-day expenses that a household cannot avoid. Accommodation that looks affordable on paper may be anything but in practice, and a local authority that confines its assessment to the headline rent figure without considering the broader financial picture is unlikely to have properly complied with its duty.
The Pattern of Successful Challenges
In practice, most successful challenges to suitability decisions do not turn on disputed points of law. They arise because the decision-maker has failed to consider relevant factors, or has considered them without explaining how they have been weighed. Offering accommodation is not the same as offering suitable accommodation, and the distinction matters. Decisions may often be overturned on review where the reasoning is found to be inadequate.
A Practitioner’s Perspective
“What I see repeatedly is local authorities ticking boxes without actually thinking about the family in front of them. A medical letter gets sent, a distance gets noted, and a decision goes out; without anyone properly considering whether the placement works for that household. The law requires more than that, and increasingly clients are pushing back — rightly so.
Early intervention makes a considerable difference. When proper representations are put to a local authority at the outset, setting out the applicant's circumstances clearly and in full, decisions are far more likely to be reconsidered. The difficulty is that most applicants are unaware of their rights, and by the time advice is sought, they have often already moved two or three times.”
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