The repurposing of Waterside Lodge in Leytonstone will provide some 24 ‘large rooms’ for households facing homelessness, reports Sebastian Mann, Local Democracy Reporter

Waltham Forest Council will use a former care home as temporary accommodation, councillors confirmed today.
They will provide some 24 new places to live for households facing homelessness, amid a growing shortage of both social and privately-rented housing.
The cabinet approved plans to repurpose Waterside Lodge in Leytonstone at a meeting today (10th September).
Proposals to convert and expand Walthamstow London Hotel and the former Sleeping Beauty Motel, in Lea Bridge Road, for the same reasons were greenlit by the planning committee on Tuesday, 3rd September. The combined plans will provide the council with 221 new rooms and was called a “step up” by councillor Jenny Gray.
The Walthamstow hotels will be managed by London Hotels Group, which bought the sites for £30million in 2021. Due to the scale of the buildings, the council said it could not “feasibly” manage them itself.
They were previously rented by the Home Office to house around 400 asylum seekers, until the scheme ended in January.
The finer details about the five-year lease, including how much the council will pay London Hotels Group, are not publicly available.
Meanwhile, the 24 “large” rooms at Waterside Lodge will be managed by Waltham Forest Council. The authority has agreed a three-year lease and will retain the option of purchasing the site outright.
Each room will be self-contained, with a private kitchenette.
Similarly, the financial agreement has not been made public, but the council says it costs less than booking overnight hotels.
Waltham Forest has a statutory obligation to provide housing for homeless residents or those at risk of ending up on the streets.
The current alternative is to pay for residents to stay in commercial hotels or bed-and-breakfasts, which is financially unsustainable. The council has also offered residents accommodation outside the borough – even as far as away as in Stoke-on-Trent.
The council is expected to overspend by £14m this financial year. It says that is “largely due” to the cost of booking rooms in hotels.
Though the net cost of incorporating the hotels is “expensive,” it will lessen financial pressures by around £4.5m per year.
Council leader Grace Williams said the council was under “immense” pressure to house at-risk residents.
She added: “One of the pressures we’re under, like many other authorites [in London], is pressure to meet our housing need. It continues to rise for us.”
There are around 1,300 households in temporary accommodation, according to council figures. The number has increased 10% year on year since October 2022.
Many others live in shared accommodation, but the council is legally required to find them new housing after a maximum of six weeks.
Waltham Forest pointed to an incident where Enfield Council was fined £6,000 for breaching that limit, saying it wants to avoid risking a similar punishment.
This fresh scheme will not “remove the risk completely,” the council says, but will “significantly reduce it”.
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