HOMELESS families being housed in bed and breakfast accommodation are costing taxpayers £20,000 a month, figures reveal.

Colchester Council has 37 families in temporary accommodation in Clacton and Ipswich.

The number has more than trebled in a year.

Tim Young, Colchester councillor responsible for housing, said the situation was bleak and admitted it was costing taxpayers an unacceptable amount of money.

He said: “There are far too many people living in bed and breakfast accommodation at the moment.

“The problem has been made worse by the fact that Ascot House, where we usually house a number of people while they are on the housing list, is undergoing refurbishment.

“There are a lot more people being made homeless at the moment too, because of job losses. It is a bleak picture, and it is frightfully expensive to keep people in bed and breakfasts.

“At the moment, there is no other option.”

The authority is going to build social housing for the first time in 20 years, but plans are still in their early stages.

Mr Young said: “We are doing what we can to bring the number of homeless people in Colchester back down to single figures like they were a year ago, but there is no short-term answer.

“What we need to do is build more social housing, and I will be putting pressure on the Government to give us the money to do that.”

A spokesman for Colchester Council said when a person makes an application for assistance, under homelessness laws, it can use bed and breakfasts while it investigates if it has a legal duty to help house the applicants.

She said: “If we find we do have a duty to house them, we try to move them from B&B as quickly as possible.

“However, it is not possible to say how long this takes. It varies from family to family, as it depends on what sort of property they need.”

The number of homeless people in the UK has risen by 18 per cent compared with this time last year.

The number of of people living in bed and breakfasts while they wait to be housed has risen by 35 per cent.