ALMOST 1,500 households in Bolton were tipped into homelessness during the first 18 months of the pandemic, and a councillor fears it could soon get worse.

Housing charity Shelter said thousands of families across the country have become homeless during the Covid-19 crisis, and with living costs rising, more are at risk now.

Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities figures show that 1,493 households in Bolton sought council support after becoming homeless between April 2020 and the end of September 2021.

Of those, 319 were households with children.

Across England, 222,360 households have been pushed into homelessness since April 2020 – equivalent to a city larger than Bolton.

Shelter said if someone has become repeatedly homeless over the 18 months, they would appear in the figures multiple times – though the charity estimates this to be a very small number of cases.

Nicholas Peel, the leader of the Labour group on Bolton Council, said the situation was likely to deteriorate and called for drastic action to improve matters.

He said: "I am worried it is going to get worse.

"I think it is a shocking state of affairs in a modern society that these things happen.

"When you talk about homelessness it is not just rough sleeping, that is the most extreme, it is also people sofa surfing.

"There is an old adage that most of us are only one bill away from homelessness.

"I do not think enough is being done to assist people with the cost of living crisis.

"A lot of people are going to have to make a stark choice between not paying their rent or montage, turning the heating off or not feeding themselves of their children.

"I think we need a proper plan to wipe out fuel bill rises."

He also called for a windfall tax on utility companies and the real living wage to be introduced.

Osama Bhutta, director of campaigns at Shelter, said the pandemic has been "atrocious" for struggling families even with protections like the eviction ban and the £20 Universal Credit uplift.

She added: “Now, living costs are spiralling and all the protections are gone, even more people will be at risk of losing their homes.

“The economic impact of the pandemic has exposed the true cost of decades of failure to build the social homes we need, leaving millions in insecure homes they can barely afford."

Bailiff-enforced evictions were banned for a large part of the pandemic – a measure introduced by the Government to prevent renters from being made homeless – though the ban was lifted in England on May 31.

Containing the first three full months’ worth of data after the eviction ban was lifted, the latest statistics show 36,510 English households became homeless between July and September 2021 – the equivalent of 397 every day.

In Bolton, 308 households needed help because they were homeless over this time – up from 258 during the same period in 2020.

And Crisis said there are even more people across England "slipping through the cracks" who are not recorded in these figures.

A Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said its actions had helped keep thousands of people in their homes.

A spokeswoman added: “Government interventions have also prevented almost 450,000 households from becoming homeless since 2017, supported by an extra £316 million this year, and we will also be ending no-fault evictions as soon as we can