Greenwich Council is set to buy emergency homes outside the borough to combat a rise in homelessness.

In the last year, the number of homeless households in Greenwich has nearly doubled.

In an effort to counter the huge spike, officers are recommending setting aside more than £60m to buy more properties in an effort to get more residents into housing.

Plans being put to councillors next week suggest a year-long trial to buy more accommodation outside the borough.

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In papers prepared for next week’s cabinet, officers said: “Over the coming year the council is looking to better manage the homelessness process, eliminate the use of Shared Emergency Overnight Accommodation for families, increase the quality of the temporary accommodation and make selective purchases of “out of borough” properties for use as Temporary Accommodation.”

Temporary accommodation is costly to the taxpayer, but as recently revealed there is currently an average wait of 976 days for a two bed property.

Officers said: “Due to the increase in numbers going into temporary accommodation and remaining there, extreme pressure has been placed on the council to source accommodation in borough.

“However, the escalating numbers have meant that the need to use accommodation out of the borough has increased.”

The council has placed people as far away as Hatfield and Medway, with one emergency move to Chatham coming after a resident was “severely bitten by bed bugs”.

Officers have recommended a year-long pilot for the council to buy properties “within 30 minutes” of Woolwich.

They said: “The pilot scheme will also need to assess the cost and structure of a delivery model for providing out of borough properties, considering repairs and service delivery with additional travel time.”

Greenwich Council also plans to build more than 700 council houses, borrowing millions to get schemes off the ground.

The scheme will be discussed at a meeting next Wednesday, July 10.

The local democracy reporting service recently revealed that one household has been waiting for a home in Greenwich for 47 years.

It comes as an investigation found that more than 2,000 people have been on the council’s waiting list for a decade or more.