The "scandal" of families being made homeless by the housing benefit crisis will take years to resolve, housing minister Lord Falconer admitted this week.
The benefits system "may get worse before it gets better", Falconer warned delegates at the Labour Party annual conference in Brighton.

The benefits backlog crisis reached fever pitch this week as Ashley Horsey, new Bed and Breakfast Unit head and former Empty Homes Agency chief, settled into his new job. Horsey has been greeted with the prospect of housing associations shunning temporary accommodation en masse as councils are failing to pay housing benefit.

The head of the London Housing Federation, Sue Ellenby, told Horsey in a letter this week that London RSLs face ruin from £12m housing benefit money owed to them.

"At the very time when the supply of temporary housing needs to be expanded to reduce reliance on B&B, they [RSLs] are being forced to withdraw," the letter warns.

The national number of people in temporary accommodation hit a record high in the last quarter, government figures show.

By June, 75,320 households were in temporary accommodation, with 70 per cent of the 11,340 households in B&Bs based in London.

Family Housing Association may be forced to reduce its provision of temporary accommodation by 10 per cent this year. The association's head of emergency housing, Steve Thomas, said: "Consideration should be given to funding temporary accommodation outside the housing benefit system."

Homelessness organisations fear the impact that B&B accommodation has on homeless people, particularly children.

London housing associations say they are being forced to cut back emergency provision by half, as they are owed so much in benefits arrears. And private landlords are flooding social housing with evicted tenants across the UK, housing staff claim.

But Falconer would not be drawn on whether specific targets to reduce numbers in temporary accommodation would form part of the new B&B unit's tactics.