CORNWALL Council is planning to spend almost £40million on 250 homes which would be used as temporary and emergency accommodation for people who find themselves homeless.

By buying the homes the council is hoping it will be able to slash the amount of money it spends on bed and breakfast accommodation which last year topped £1.9m.

Details of the plans are included in a report which will go to the council’s economic growth and development overview and scrutiny committee next week.

The council is looking to provide £39.3m to Cornwall Housing Limited, which it owns, to acquire the homes which would be used for emergency housing. The council is looking to spend £10m from its capital fund from housing receipts along with borrowing £29.3m.

In its report the council states: “The council has statutory duties to provide temporary accommodation to some homeless applications who are in priority need. There are currently almost 270 households in temporary accommodation and around one third of these are accommodated in emergency accommodation such as Bed & Breakfast. This accommodation is unsuitable and expensive.”

Local authorities provide emergency accommodation for people when they have been evicted from their homes or find themselves homeless.

The report notes that for families with children B&Bs should only be used in an emergency and regulations state that it should be for no more than six weeks. It adds that the council “breaches this regulation at times”.

A Freedom of Information request made earlier this year found that in 2017 the average stay in temporary accommodation for all people was 42.38 days while the longest stay was a full year.

Under the plans to buy 250 properties the council would look to buy 200 self-contained homes and then 50 houses of multiple occupation (HMOs) which could be used by single people.

The 200 homes would be aimed to be made up of 15% one-bedroom properties, 40% two-bedroom; 39% three-bedroom and 7% four-bedroom.

Cornwall Council was recently strongly criticised by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman after it was revealed that a teenage boy had been given a tent by the council after he asked for help when homeless.

The council was ordered to apologise and pay compensation to the teenager and his mother.

The Ombudsman said in its ruling that it was inappropriate for teenagers to be housed in tents, static caravans and B&Bs.

When asked the council revealed that in 2017/18 it had placed eight teenagers aged 16 and 17 in B&Bs and since April three had been placed in B&Bs.