If 741 people had died in a single Channel crossing, it would be the lead story for a fortnight. If 172,000 children were caught up in a Conservative-era scandal, every front page would be screaming. But because the dead were poor, and because the children are in damp B&Bs and converted offices that nobody from Whitehall ever has to visit, the story barely registers.

741 people have died in council-provided temporary accommodation while waiting for a permanent home. That number was confirmed this month. Campaigners are calling it a national scandal. They are right.

The Numbers Labour Doesn't Want You To See

Let's lay it out plainly. The Ministry of Housing's own figures show that 360,050 households in England sought help for homelessness in the 2024–25 financial year. That works out at nearly a thousand families and individuals presenting themselves to a council, every single day, asking to be saved from rough sleeping. One thousand families. Every day. In Britain.

Children in temporary accommodation passed 165,000 in early 2025. By summer 2025 it was over 172,000. That is more children than the entire population of Coventry, growing up in motel rooms, hotel corridors, and B&Bs with shared bathrooms. They are doing homework on the floor next to a bed their family of four sleeps in. They are changing schools every time their council shifts them to the next available room.

And while they wait — and the waits stretch into years — 741 of them died. Some from the conditions. Some from despair. Some from the sheer attrition of being processed through a system that has lost any sense that human beings are at the end of every spreadsheet.

Labour Promised 1.5 Million Homes. They Delivered Half a Plan.

Remember Labour's flagship pledge? 1.5 million homes by the end of the parliament. It was the centrepiece of the manifesto. Angela Rayner toured every TV studio to repeat the figure. It was, we were told, "the most ambitious housing plan in a generation".

Then they got into office. Planning permissions collapsed to a 15-year low. London housebuilding hit the worst level since the Second World War. Section 21 evictions surged ahead of the Renters' Rights Act phase-in. Mortgage rates climbed 59% over the period. Landlords started selling up to escape the new regulatory regime, gutting the rental supply at exactly the moment temporary-accommodation demand was peaking.

The result is the worst of all worlds. Fewer new homes. Fewer rentals. Higher prices. Longer waits. More children in temporary digs. And now — bodies.

The Renters' Rights Act Was Meant To Fix It. It's Made It Worse.

The Renters' Rights Act came into phased force from 1 May 2026. Labour said it would protect tenants. What it has actually done is accelerate the landlord exodus. Smaller landlords — the type with one or two properties who never wanted to be professional letting agents — are looking at the new regulatory burden and selling.

I have spoken to constituents in Preston East who have had this happen to them. One day you are a stable tenant of five years. The next, your landlord serves notice because the new rules make renting out a second property more trouble than it's worth. You go to the council. The council puts you in temporary accommodation. The cycle has another customer.

This is the law of unintended consequences, written by a government that won't listen to anyone outside Whitehall.

This Is About Priorities

Here is the part that should make every taxpayer angry. While 741 people died in temporary council housing, Labour was happily spending £15 billion housing asylum seekers in hotels. While British children grew up in damp motel rooms, the Home Office was block-booking three-star hotels at premium rates for new arrivals. While British families queued at the council for help, the government was signing a £662 million cheque to France for a returns deal that hasn't returned anyone.

I don't say this with relish. I say it with anger. It is a question of priorities, and Labour's priorities are wrong. You cannot claim to care about housing the homeless while you are simultaneously importing more demand for housing than the system can possibly absorb. Maths beats sentiment every time.

What Reform UK Would Do

Reform UK has a clear plan, and it doesn't require another think-tank to write a report. First — close the asylum hotels and use the saved billions to fund a proper temporary accommodation programme for British families on the waiting list. Second — reform the planning system to actually build, with priority on family-sized homes near jobs. Third — protect small landlords from a regulatory regime that is choking the rental sector. Fourth — control immigration so we are not adding hundreds of thousands of new units of demand into a market that already cannot cope.

And fifth — be honest about the dead. 741 people did not die because of "the housing crisis". They died because successive governments — and this Labour government most of all — chose other things. It is time we chose them.