Children’s Commissioner Rachel de Souza has revealed that at least 12,330 children in England were living in shared accommodation such as B&Bs and hostels as of June 2025, with 9,510 of them having been there for more than six weeks. Some 520 families had been in B&B accommodation for over a year, with 30 families there for more than five years.

New data obtained by De Souza exposes a significant loophole: the six-week statutory time limit applies to privately owned B&Bs but does not extend to council-owned or managed hostels. Of the 3,380 households with children in local authority-owned accommodation with shared facilities, 90% had been there longer than six weeks, compared to 65% in privately owned B&Bs.

De Souza warns that without urgent reform, the Government’s homelessness strategy target to end the illegal use of B&Bs risks simply shifting children from one form of unsuitable shared accommodation to another, with no meaningful improvement to their lives.

She is calling on the Government to broaden the legal definition of B&B accommodation to include council-owned hostels, extend the six-week limit to all forms of shared accommodation, and commit to publishing this data annually.