Today we launch Support to End Homelessness 2025: review of services addressing single homelessness in England. Since 2008, the Review has tracked the sector’s shape, size and challenges, and the circumstances of people accessing homelessness support. The research aims to help service providers, commissioners, policy makers, and local authorities respond to the needs of people experiencing homelessness.
Cate Standing-Tattersall, Research Manager at Homeless Link, unpacks key findings from the eighteenth edition of the report.
Shape of the sector: the need to keep our doors open
The sector has contracted sharply over the past 18 years as funding sources and policy priorities have shifted. There are 942 accommodation projects across England, which represents an increase of 3% from last year, but a decrease of 46% since the research series began. There are 34,451 bedspaces available, representing a 41% decline since 2008; and 172 day centres currently operating - 9% fewer than in 2008.
Number of accommodation providers, 2008-2025
At the same time, the statutory data reveals a stark picture of rising homelessness, with rough sleeping estimates and the number of households in temporary accommodation reaching record levels. An estimated 4,793 people were sleeping rough on a given night in 2025, representing a 171% increase since 2010. On 31 December 2025, 134,210 households were in temporary accommodation, a 5% annual increase.
It is vital that the homelessness strategy delivers much needed change, including the new target to halve long-term rough sleeping, and that local authorities use their new funding to secure the provision of homelessness support services that offer a lifeline to people experiencing homelessness, from day services to emergency accommodation and supported housing.
Breaking the Cycle: the need for transformational change
This year’s report continues to highlight the sheer and sustained financial pressure frontline services operate under. 71% of both accommodation providers and day services report that rising costs and financial pressures have had negative implications on service delivery.
The findings on homelessness service funding show that accommodation providers continue to rely on Housing Benefit (54%) as their primary source of income, of which 56% is through Enhanced Housing Benefit to provide supported exempt accommodation. A sizable proportion of providers report experiencing increased scrutiny on supported exempt accommodation funded through Enhanced Housing Benefit by their local authority. This has left many services open to financial risk and closure.
The upcoming Value for Money review of homelessness services is a golden opportunity to articulate the need for fundamental change to the homelessness system. This coupled with newly announced changes to homelessness funding, including the Homeless, Rough Sleeping and Domestic Abuse grant, has the potential to shift the dial for homelessness accommodation provision and the wider system. Furthermore, these changes are a welcome acknowledgement by the Government that funding cuts, removal of ringfencing, and short-term funding cycles have led to many systemic challenges.
Changing profile of needs
Findings in 2025 demonstrate a continued trend of people presenting to services with increased complexity of needs and from diverse populations driven by varied causes of homelessness.
Alarmingly, services reported that they were increasingly providing support to people facing in-work homelessness. This indicates that inflated living costs and financial pressures, including low paid insecure work, continue to be key drivers of homelessness in 2025 and highlights the urgent need for further welfare reform and homelessness prevention.
Proportion of homelessness services who have seen an increase in the number of people they are supporting due to financial pressures
Both day centres and accommodation providers also reported seeing substantial increases amongst refugees accessing their services (72% and 45% respectively). The announcement of the 42 day move-on period from asylum accommodation alongside the other Government proposals for reform to the asylum and immigration systems will mean that exiting asylum accommodation continues to be a substantial driver of rough sleeping and homelessness, particularly in the absence of wider improvements to the support available during the move-on period.
The report also finds evidence of an increase in the number of services supporting prison leavers (27% of accommodation providers and 50% of day centres) and care leavers (24% and 20% respectively). The new cross-government targets to reduce homelessness from prisons, care and hospital, outlined in the homelessness strategy, are a welcome ambition.
Despite the changing and increased complexity of the profile of needs, providers face accessibility barriers when linking their clients into support services. Whilst access to mental health support remains a significant challenge, homelessness services also report barriers to adult social care services (88% of accommodation providers and 95% of day centres), increasingly requiring them to step in to fill gaps in care provision. This has created a shadow social care sector, delivering support to some of the most vulnerable adults in our society without oversight, input or resource from adult social care.
The Casey Commission, an independent review of adult social care running until 2028, offers an opportunity to think about where homelessness support fits in the social care landscape and an imperative chance to interrogate the interaction between unmet social care needs and homelessness.
Support to End Homelessness 2025 highlights the role of frontline homelessness services in responding to the rising demand, changing profile of need, and systemic barriers within the housing and health and social care sectors. Years of stagnant funding and real-term cuts have pushed services to breaking point. Services need sustainable funding that enables them to keep their doors open and continue to provide a lifeline for vulnerable people. To ‘get back on track to ending homelessness and rough sleeping’, all of government must take responsibility to break the cycle of homelessness by delivering fundamental change for the system, shifting to a sustainable model rooted in prevention and long-term support.
