Responding to the Budget, announced on Wednesday 6 March, Rick Henderson, CEO of Homeless Link, said:
“The Chancellor has made a dangerous decision to ignore the real experts - our members - and their repeated calls to safeguard invaluable homelessness services in today’s Budget. This is astounding, coming only days after the annual rough sleeping and latest temporary accommodation statistics issued the starkest of warnings on the severity of this country’s homelessness emergency.
"The 2p National Insurance cut will do nothing to help the thousands of people who are rough sleeping and while public spending is planned to rise by 1% overall, experience tells us that this is actually likely to mean significant cuts to unprotected budgets like local government, housing and homelessness.
“The short extension of the Household Support Fund offers a scrap of hope. But without adequate and sustainable funding for homelessness support, which literally provides a lifeline for people being pushed into homelessness, we are likely to see rough sleeping spiral further out of control, with more and more people exposed to the trauma of sleeping on our streets and at risk of deteriorating health.”
