For UK council teams Live in London

Tonight, not tomorrow.

When a family presents at 10pm, your team needs a room, not a phone tree. Live booking infrastructure for council out-of-hours emergency placement.

Book a Demo I'm a Hotel or Host

Free for councils. No procurement required to explore.

Hackney booked 2 rooms · 4m ago

Available Tonight Live

247rooms across London

All boroughs Family Under £100 Accessible

Euston Apartment

1-Bed · Sleeps 3 · NW1

£89

Stratford 2-Bed

Family · Sleeps 4 · E15

£115

Lewisham Hotel

Twin · Sleeps 2 · SE13

£72

How it works

Empty room to confirmed placement. Same evening.

Before 6pm

Hotels list unsold rooms

Partner hotels add unsold inventory at pre-negotiated rates. No commitment until a council books.

6pm · Rooms go live

The platform opens

All available rooms become instantly searchable and bookable by verified council teams.

Evening

Your team books online

Filter by family size, location, price. Confirm with one click. Documentation generated automatically.

Same night

Family arrives safely

Confirmation sent to hotel and council. Check-in ready. Placement complete.

Search to confirmed booking: under 5 minutes

£844M

Spent on emergency B&Bs, 2024/25

£2.84B

Total council TA spend

132,410

Households in TA, June 2025

172,420

Children in temporary housing

Source: MHCLG Revenue Outturn 2024/25 · Shelter analysis · House of Commons Library, Dec 2025

Two versions of 10pm.

A family presents. What happens next?

Right now

Phone calls to 5-10 hotels, most don't answer

Rack rates: paying 40-60% more than necessary

No compliance docs until morning

2-3 hours to place one family

Sometimes no room found at all

Recommended

With SortStay

Your team opens one screen and sees every available room

Rates agreed in advance. No haggling at 10pm

Placement record, confirmation, and audit trail created on booking

Search to confirmed booking in under five minutes

A room is always there. Every evening

“

"We used to spend hours calling around hotels, sometimes physically driving to three or four before we found a room. Last week, the whole thing took eight minutes."

Out-of-hours team lead
London borough, pilot participant

"The compliance piece alone saves us. Every booking comes with a placement record already generated. No more Monday morning paperwork chaos."

Housing options manager
London borough council

"We listed 12 rooms. They were booked within the first week. This is revenue that was sitting empty every single evening. Now it's guaranteed."

Hotel operations director
East London property group

For Councils

What a pilot looks like.

We set up your team on the platform with real hotel inventory. You test it on live placements. If it doesn't save time and money, you stop. No contract. No cost.

Week 1

Platform walkthrough

15-minute demo with your team. We configure borough-specific hotel inventory.

Week 2

Go live

Out-of-hours officers use SortStay on real placements. Full support throughout.

Week 4

Pilot review

Cost savings report, time savings data, compliance audit. Decision to continue or stop.

No procurement required. SortStay operates as a spot-purchase below DPS threshold. No formal procurement process needed to pilot. Live within 5 working days of sign-off.

Book a 15-minute pilot call

Booking ConfirmedConfirmed

REF: SS-2026-04891

Euston Apartment

Room

1-Bed · Sleeps 3

Rate

£89 / night

Check-in

9:42pm tonight

Duration

1 night

Placement recordAuto

Booking confirmationAuto

Audit trail entryAuto

Revenue from unsold rooms

Rooms sitting empty after 6pm become guaranteed, local-authority-backed bookings.

Zero acquisition cost

Councils find you through the platform. No OTA commissions. No marketing spend.

You set the terms

Your rates. Your availability. Your house rules. Full control over what you offer.

Real social impact

Every room you list is a family who sleeps safely that night instead of on the street.

For Hotels & Property Hosts

Turn empty evenings into guaranteed income.

Every evening after 6pm, councils urgently need hotel rooms. You have rooms sitting empty. List your inventory, set your rates. We handle bookings, payments, and paperwork.

How it works commercially: SortStay takes a small commission per booking. You receive payment within 7 days. No invoicing, no chasing. One clean payment per booking.

Why this hasn't been solved.

Councils must shelter homeless families the same night they present. The tools for doing it after hours haven't changed in a decade. Three structural gaps explain why.

The inventory gap

Hotels don't list emergency-rate rooms publicly

Discounted last-minute rooms never appear on Booking.com. Hotels will negotiate, but only directly, case by case, at 10pm. That doesn't scale.

The compliance gap

Consumer platforms don't generate council paperwork

Councils need audit trails, placement records, and suitability documentation. No consumer booking site produces these. So teams do it manually, or skip it.

The timing gap

Demand peaks when everything else is closed

Placements concentrate in the evening. Procurement frameworks, corporate rates, and council systems are designed for office hours. The mismatch is structural.

Pilot slots open, spring 2026

For Councils

See it working.

15-minute walkthrough with real inventory and live booking flow. No cost, no commitment, no procurement needed.

We'll send a calendar link within 24 hours.

or email directly

councils@sortstay.com

For Hotels & Hosts

List your rooms.

Turn unsold evening inventory into guaranteed, council-backed bookings. Set your own rates. We handle the rest.

We'll reach out within one working day.

or email directly

hosts@sortstay.com