Ending rough sleeping in London

Communities and Local Government (CLG) launched their strategy in November 2008. The Mayor of London is committed to delivering the target of ending rough sleeping in London by 2012.

what is the Mayor doing?

The Mayor of London does not control all of the bodies and partners, such as Local Authorities, who need to work together to end rough sleeping in the Capital but he is able to use his influence to pull people together. 

A group called the London Delivery Board (LDB) was set up in February 2009. The board meets every two months, bringing together senior representatives from the voluntary sector, Local Authorities, UK Border Agency, Ministry of Justice, CLG and the NHS in London. Homeless Link, Crisis, St Mungo's and Thames Reach represent the voluntary sector and the board is chaired by Richard Blakeway – the Mayor’s Advisor on Housing.

Before the first meeting a number of priority areas were established, including:

•  A10s and those with no recourse to public funds
• movement of rough sleepers across London including between boroughs and also from outside London
• entrenched rough sleepers and clients with complex needs
• enforcement
• ex-offenders
• health
• skills and employment
• accommodation.

Board members have been tasked with finding further information about these areas to feed into an action plan which is currently being developed to address these issues.

A number of other groups have been established to feed into the LDB. These include:

• The Street Population Co-ordinators Group – Local Authority officers with operational responsibility for rough sleepers
• The Cross Border Enforcement Group - Local Authority Street Population Co-ordinators and the Police
• The Mayor’s Homeless Round Table Group – senior voluntary sector representatives (HL, OSW, Crisis, The Passage, Salvation Army, Thames Reach, Broadway, Connection at St Martins, ECHG, Look Ahead, St Mungos, Big Issue)
• The Service Providers Group – voluntary sector providers with operational responsibility for services for rough sleepers.

What is Homeless Link doing

London Delivery Board
At the first London Delivery Board meeting we were tasked with working with The National Offender Management Service (NOMS) to produce some proposals about ex-offenders who become homeless, particularly those who have short term sentences (less than 12 months).

Homelessness Round Table Group
Joe Kent attends as our representative at the Mayor's Homeless Round Table Group. The first meeting of this group identified the following pieces of work:

• 1 month snapshot of new arrivals to the streets with experience of prison. We want to find out when and where they were in prison and how this relates to their rough sleeping. We are co-ordinating this piece of work with Broadway
• 1 week vacancy survey – matching the experience of outreach teams in accessing vacancies to the information on Homeless London
• review of co-ordination and consistency between schemes to help people access the private rented sector. Crisis are leading on this piece of work
• attempt to track leakage of resources arising from the move from ring-fenced Supporting People funding, to Area Based Grants.

The Practitioners Group
This group, led by Homeless Link, brings together those who manage relevant services to act as expert advisors to the other groups and to ensure that the most important issues are fed up to the Homelessness Roundtable and the London Delivery Board. The first meeting of this group will take place on 23 March 2010.

Umbrella body of the homelessness sector
As the membership body for the homelessness sector we want to make sure other member agencies are able to feed in to the delivery of the target and also find out what is happening. We will be meeting regularly with Housing Justice, which represents faith groups. We are also going to specifically target those who provide relevant services but who are not members of the Homelessness Roundtable and find out how they would like to be consulted and involved. We will offer these services various mechanisms for engagement and then identify the most effective.

In conclusion

There may be pieces of work coming from the LDB and the Roundtable that are relevant to other work we are doing. If you have contacts or intelligence that would be useful please email Paul Anderson.

We will keep you up to date with what we are doing. Agencies and staff will be regularly informed about progress, new initiatives and ways in which they can feed in their knowledge and experience.

For more information please contact Paul Anderson or Joe Kent.