Expenditure was heavily concentrated in London, with £739m spent in 2024-25, but parts of England had also seen their spending soar.
Since 2011-12, councils in the East Midlands saw a 4,182pc increase in temporary accommodation in real terms, rising from £1.2m to £51m.
In the West Midlands, the figures soared from just under £2m to £47m – a rise of 1,539pc.
‘Councils stretched to breaking point’
Councillor Eamonn O’Brien, chairman of the LGA, said: “Temporary accommodation is a huge leak in council budgets that needs to be patched quickly and, at its heart, transform the lives of families and children across the country.
“While the Government’s focus on prevention has been encouraging, we need both swift action and long-term solutions from the next prime minister and their administration.
“The way that councils are reimbursed by central government is not working, and it’s impacting the entire country due to the knock-on effect on budgets and all other services.”
Richard Tice, deputy leader of Reform UK, said: “The Tories and Labour have completely lost control of our borders, and now ordinary people are facing the consequences.
“While our roads crumble and councils are stretched to breaking point, local authorities are being forced to find an extra £1bn compared with five years ago to house, in many cases, people who have only just arrived.”
The LGA added that local authorities would rather invest in affordable housing to prevent homelessness happening “in the first place”.
In 2024, Labour pledged to halve the number of long-term rough sleepers by the end of the parliament.
Yet in September, record numbers of households were recorded as living in temporary accommodation across England, an increase of 7pc from September 2024. The number of children living in temporary accommodation reached 172,420.
In December, Andy Burnham, then mayor of Greater Manchester, attacked Sir Keir Starmer for failing to be sufficiently “radical” to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping.
He told ITV News: “What I am saying is homelessness is fixable – it requires something more radical if you really want to fix it.
“If you go for that ‘housing first’ approach – ‘everyone in’, ‘a bed every night’, those type of approaches – in the end, in my view, you save money.”
