Charities call for urgent action to guarantee ‘5 Basics’ in every temporary accommodation home in Lambeth

Charities working on the frontline of Lambeth’s housing crisis are calling on the council to guarantee five simple essentials: cooking facilities, laundry access, Wi-Fi, secure storage, and access to clear …

May 15, 2026 - 11:33

Charities call for urgent action to guarantee ‘5 Basics’ in every temporary accommodation home in Lambeth

Charities working on the frontline of Lambeth’s housing crisis are calling on the council to guarantee five simple essentials: cooking facilities, laundry access, Wi-Fi, secure storage, and access to clear information in every temporary accommodation placement.

Their call comes as a major Parliamentary report warns that temporary accommodation across England is now in deep crisis, with some placements so poor they risk breaching human-rights protections, including the right to family life and the prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment.

Public legal education charity Advicenow and the Indoamerican Refugee and Migrant Organisation (IRMO) are urging the council to adopt the ‘5 Basics’ as a formal standard in temporary accommodation.

The 5 Basics are intentionally modest – not a full solution to the housing crisis, but a baseline that ensures families can cook, wash, study, store belongings safely, and communicate with the council about their case.

The two organisations are part of the Better Temporary Accommodation Alliance, made up of 20 organisations across London delivering frontline services and support, legal education, research and policy, advocacy and campaigning.

Why Lambeth needs this now

Lambeth has one of the highest numbers of households in temporary accommodation in London. The borough has over 4,700 households in TA, including more than 6,000 children, a scale that places immense pressure on families and services.

Many residents are placed in cramped single rooms without kitchens, forced to share bathrooms with strangers, or reliant on expensive laundrettes because their accommodation lacks basic washing facilities. Others struggle to keep up with children’s schoolwork due to unreliable or non-existent Wi-Fi.

The reality for many of those families, as IRMO staff encounter it every day, is stark. Mothers describe having nowhere to bathe their babies. Families with young children are living in properties riddled with bedbugs, with no kitchen and no washing machine.

People with serious illnesses, including cancer, are placed in homes with damp that worsens their condition. Some residents have been in “temporary” accommodation for two, three, even five years.

Children are sometimes uprooted mid-school year and placed as far away as Croydon, forced to travel several hours a day to stay in their existing school.

When residents or other support services try to get information from Lambeth about assessments or next steps, they report receiving no response at all.

For families already living in unsafe and unsuitable conditions, this silence adds another layer of fear and uncertainty to an already traumatic situation.

As one TA resident noted: “I have written emails and made phone calls to Lambeth, but they only pass me from one department to another, without any real response.”

These local experiences echo the findings of the House of Commons Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee’s 2024–26 report, which concluded that temporary accommodation nationally is “overstretched, unsuitable, and in some cases unsafe.”

The report warns that prolonged stays in poor-quality TA can seriously harm children’s health, disrupt education, and undermine family stability — all issues that Lambeth organisations say they witness daily.

What the 5 Basics would change

Local organisations are asking Lambeth Council to publicly adopt the 5 Basics as a borough‑wide minimum standard in temporary accommodation, audit all placements to identify where standards are not being met, and publish an action plan with clear timelines and accountability.

They also want the council to publish transparent data on how public money for temporary accommodation is being used and by whom, and to work with Better Temporary Accommodation Alliance members to monitor compliance and gather residents’ feedback.

Campaigners stress that adopting the 5 Basics would bring Lambeth in line with good practice already emerging elsewhere in London and would reduce long-term costs by preventing avoidable health problems linked to damp, overcrowding and poor nutrition.

Now that the local elections have taken place and a new council administration is in place, campaigners say this is the moment for Lambeth to show it is serious about improving conditions for families in temporary accommodation.

The 5 Basics campaign offers a simple, practical benchmark against which residents can hold the council to account over the coming months and years.

For Lambeth families, the question remains the same: should anyone in our borough be living without the absolute essentials needed for dignity and safety?