The council will lease 20 flats in a converted Quarry Hill Road office block for homeless local families. It says about 100 households need temporary housing.

Twenty flats on Quarry Hill Road in Tonbridge will be used to house local families who become homeless. Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council has signed an agreement to lease them. The building is being converted from offices by its owners, and the council takes the lease once the flats are ready.

The council announced the deal on Tuesday 3 November. It says the one and two bedroom flats are for families with a local connection whom it has a legal duty to house. (Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council, 3 November 2026)

The announcement does not say which building it is, when the conversion will be finished, or what the lease costs.

Why the council is doing it

The council says about 100 households currently need temporary accommodation across the borough. It spends around £2.2 million a year on more costly options to house them, and says the flats will help reduce that.

The government’s latest count shows where those families are now. On 31 March 2026 Tonbridge and Malling had 98 households in temporary accommodation, including 131 children. Of those 98:

  • 62 were in nightly paid, privately managed self-contained homes, the most expensive kind
  • 31 were in council or housing association homes
  • 5 were in leased private homes

The same tables record 62 households the borough had a duty to house who were placed outside it, in other council areas in the South East. (MHCLG live tables on homelessness)

That is the problem the council’s Cabinet Member for Housing, Environment and Economy, Councillor Robin Betts, pointed to. He said the flats are “close to the town centre, railway station and importantly within the borough”.

He added: “Everyone has a right to a decent place to live, and we are proud to be able to support local families from Tonbridge and Malling who find themselves needing emergency housing at short notice to stay within the local area.”

Agreed in private in January

The deal is not new to the council. Cabinet approved it on 6 January 2026, in a private session, because the report contained commercial information. The published record says Cabinet agreed to lease 20 apartments in Tonbridge through an “agreement for lease”, because the building still needed conversion work.

It also says buying a long lease outright “was not considered a viable option as the authority did not have sufficient funds or access to the level of capital required”. The one-off set-up costs and tax liability were noted, but the figures are in the restricted report. (Decision D260008CAB, Cabinet 6 January 2026)

The other scheme

The council is also building its own temporary homes. Twelve two-bedroom modular flats are going up on the old car park at Blue Bell Hill, due to be let from spring 2027. Our report on that scheme has the cost and the timetable.

Between them, the two schemes would add 32 homes. The council’s temporary accommodation page says it owns or leases only around 30 properties to house families in. (Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council, temporary accommodation)

What it means for you

  • If you are homeless or about to be, contact the council’s housing team as early as you can. The council’s homelessness pages explain how temporary accommodation works.
  • If you live near Quarry Hill Road, the conversion is being done by the building’s owners, not the council. The council has not said when the flats will open. We will report it when it does.
  • If you pay council tax here, the £2.2 million a year the council spends on temporary housing is the figure to watch. The council says the flats will reduce its reliance on more costly options.