Spending by councils on housing families in bed and breakfast accommodation has surged by 780 per cent in a decade, prompting renewed calls for urgent action to mitigate the housing crisis.

An analysis of official data by the Local Government Association (LGA) revealed cash-strapped local authorities had to spend £93.3m on B&Bs for homeless households last year, up from £10.6m in 2009-10.

Campaigners said families were “paying the ultimate price” for successive governments’ failure to build social homes, and urged ministers to adapt welfare reforms to protect families at risk of becoming homeless.

Councils only use bed and breakfasts as a last resort, but the continued loss of social housing was leaving many with no alternative in which to house homeless families, the LGA said.

There are currently 7,040 households in bed and breakfast accommodation – up from 2,450 a decade ago, an increase of 187 per cent.

Termination of a private rented sector tenancy is now one of the biggest causes of homelessness, with 97 per cent of areas in England currently unaffordable for renters who are entitled to housing support.

Cllr David Renard, the LGA’s housing spokesperson, said the “last thing” councils wanted to be doing was placing people in bed and breakfast accommodation, but that they were increasingly exhausting all their options and having little choice but to use B&Bs.

“Not only is this far from ideal for families, it is very expensive for councils, who are already under significant financial pressures,” he added.

“Councils would much rather use these scarce resources to build more affordable homes and prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place.”

He urged the government to use the Queen’s Speech to “kick-start the genuine renaissance in council housebuilding” which he said was needed to reduce homelessness and solve the national housing crisis.

The Stats: Homelessness in the UK Show all 10 1 /10 The Stats: Homelessness in the UK The Stats: Homelessness in the UK Sleeping rough up 165% from 2010 The total number of people counted or estimated to be sleeping rough on a single night in autumn 2018 was 4,677, up 2,909 people or 165% from the 2010 total of 1,768 Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK London rough sleepers up 13% The number of people sleeping rough increased by 146 or 13% in London since 2017 AFP/Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK London accounted for 27% of people sleeping rough in England London accounted for 27% of the total number of people sleeping rough in England. This is up from 24% of the England total in 2017 Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK 64% of rough sleeps UK nationals 64% were UK nationals, compared to 71% in 2017 AFP/Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK 14% of rough sleepers are women 14% of the people recorded sleeping rough were women, the same as in 2017 Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK 6% were aged 25 years or under, compared to 8% in 2017 AFP/Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK Thousands of families staying in temporary housing Almost 79,000 families were staying in temporary housing in the last three months of 2017 because they didn't have a permanent home, compared with 48,010 in the same period eight years before Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK Reduction in families living in temporary housing before Coalition government There had been a significant reduction in families living in such conditions before the Coalition government came into power, with the number having fallen by 52 per cent between 2004 and 2010 under the Labour government AFP/Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK Families staying in temporary has risen since But the figure has crept up in each of the past seven years, from 69,140 in the last quarter of 2015, to 75,740 in the same period in 2016 and 78,930 at the end of last year Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK Nearly 58,000 families accepted as homeless (2018) Nearly 58,000 families have been accepted as homeless by their local council in the past year (as of March 2018), equating to an increase of 8 per cent over the last five years Getty

Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter, said: “Every day, our services hear from parents at their wits’ end, trying to raise their children in one cramped room of a grotty B&B – circumstances no child should have to face.

“But councils have been backed into a corner, forced to pay out vast sums for emergency accommodation because there’s nowhere else for people to go. At the same time, they are not being given the resources they need to build much-needed social homes.”

She said that in order to stop more families falling into homelessness, ministers must urgently commit to building 3 million more social homes over the next 20 years.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said: “Everyone should have somewhere safe to live and to support those most in need we have removed the borrowing cap, freeing up councils to double housing delivery to around 10,000 new social homes a year by 2021/22.