MORE than 100,000 children will be homeless this Christmas, housing charity Shelter warned yesterday — equivalent to about four pupils at every school in Britain.

Charity workers condemned the “terrible milestone” of 15,000 more children than last year being stuck in temporary accommodation.

In a review of official statistics, Shelter found that the number of families living in often cramped and unsafe bed and breakfasts — packed into a single room and sharing facilities with strangers — had more than tripled under the Tories and had increased by a quarter to 2,700 in the past year.

“Almost every day, we hear from families who’ve fallen on hard times and found themselves living in a single cramped room of a B&B or hostel, unable to give their children the environment they need to grow and thrive in,” said Shelter services directory Alison Mohammed.

“Worrying about your child’s safety every day, eating dinners on the floor and sharing beds — this is no way for a family to live.”

Parents said that since being forced into temporary accommodation, their children had become “tearful and clingy” and reported bed-wetting, speech problems, anxiety and distress.

Families reported living in unfit and often dangerous conditions, with children seeing their parents being physically attacked, being exposed to drug and alcohol abuse and having strangers barge into their rooms.

Shelter said that its advisers were struggling to keep up as more and more families are made homeless.

Since 2010, private rents have risen by 12.5 per cent across England — and 20.9 per cent in London. Over the same period, household income has gone up by 4 per cent on average.

Several of the families Shelter interviewed reported being forced out of their homes by landlords and being unable to afford anywhere else.

Meanwhile, the government is selling off yet more council and housing association homes and, for the remaining tenants, planning to whack up their rents to close to the extortionate market rates.

Prime Minister David Cameron has bragged about his starter homes scheme, but households in England earning up to £40,000 a year will be priced out of them in almost three-fifths of the country.