Sophie Boobis, Head of Policy and Research, reflects on the recent Comprehensive Spending Review and what it means for the homelessness and supported housing sector.
If you’re anything like us, last Wednesday’s Comprehensive Spending Review was your most hotly-awaited announcement of the summer. Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ statement was regarded by many as one of the key moments for the Labour government to really set out its commitment to end homelessness for good.
The run up to the statement was busy with members all across the sector making the case for a systematic review of homelessness spending, the commitment to break the cycle of rising homelessness by reforming funding for providers across the sector, and investing in a prevention focused response to help prevent and end homelessness. Colleagues at Turning Lives Around in Leeds were even able to make the case to the chancellor herself when she conducted a service visit just days before the announcement.
So, did we see our asks play out in the CSR’s spending commitments?
Well… sort of, but there’s still a lot more detail we need before we can say for definite.
Homelessness can’t be ended without sufficient affordable housing, and lack of social housing has been both a driver of homelessness and something that traps too many in homelessness. So we have to start by welcoming one of the most significant announcements of the CSR: £39bn in new funding for a ten-year programme of affordable and social housebuilding. This is a genuine step-change in social housing investment and provides long-overdue recognition of social housing as the cornerstone of a homelessness system that works.
But whilst affordable housing must be the foundation of any strategy to ending homelessness, it can’t be done with housing alone. Firstly, it is of course a long-term approach and there are people experiencing homelessness now who continue to need access to vital support and accommodation. And then for the many people whose cause of homelessness is not housing but is instead unmet health, mental health, social care needs, and trauma, there is still the ongoing need to secure the sustainability of the wider homelessness support system. Recognising that investing in cross-departmental homelessness prevention and effective support is critical to ending homelessness for everyone.
Government announced that they are ‘protecting’ homelessness spending, meaning no cuts to the existing £1bn p/a homelessness budget. This is a relief given the cuts to revenue spending elsewhere. This is the funding that currently covers the Homelessness Prevention Grant, the Rough Sleeping Prevention and Recovery Grant, RSAP etc. Whilst we have been calling for inflationary uplifts to this fund in recognition of the rising costs of delivery that have been seen over the years in the context of the wider budget securing this with no cuts is welcome.
What we don’t know yet is if the allocation of this budget will be the same as in previous years. The Treasury have set the envelope in this CSR but not the detail. In our Breaking the Cycle campaign we have been calling for a fundamental reset of homelessness funding recognising how years of fragmented funding has caused chaos in the delivery of homelessness services. This means the baton has now been passed to MHCLG ahead of their upcoming Homelessness Strategy. They have the financial clarity now to deliver a transformative strategy.
Also welcome is the £950m for temporary accommodation and remediation costs. Whilst the ambition must be to vastly reduce the number of households trapped in temporary accommodation we do have to recognise the crisis that exists now. With temporary accommodation so costly, and putting so many local authorities at financial risk, we know that it is also absorbing existing funding from elsewhere in the sector leading to cuts in supported housing and wider sector support services. If this fund can help improve the quality of TA for those living there currently whilst taking pressure of budgets elsewhere that we must see this as a positive (as long as we see the strategy to reduce TA down the line…).
Prevention
At Homeless Link, and across the sector, we have long been asking for a greater investment and understanding of homelessness prevention. Asking for this to be pushed further upstream, and recognising the cross-departmental role of homelessness prevention. This is where there’s some interesting green shoots emerging that suggest Government have heard, and are recognising this message.
Homelessness prevention has been acknowledged within the new £3.2bn Transformation Fund, funding the majority of a new £100m programme of early interventions to prevent homelessness. This pot also includes £100m for support for adults with complex needs through new community help partnerships which intend to bring together a range of services, providing better support for adults in crisis and reaching vulnerable individuals earlier.
Alongside this is the new £1bn / year Crisis and Resilience Fund which is replacing the Household Support Fund, consolidating it and creating a multi-year programme. This will also include Discretionary Housing Payments. This means Local Authorities will have greater flexibility to support households in financial hardship, hopefully enabling more upstream homelessness prevention recognising the wider poverty drivers of homelessness.
These interventions are exactly the kind of consideration we have been asking for when it comes to broader upstream prevention and does indicate a positive direction of travel on which to build.
What’s missing?
Disappointingly, there is a supported housing shape hole in the CSR. The protection of homelessness budgets at current spend means we’ve not seen any additional investment to address the ongoing underfunding for the support part of supported housing. One of our big asks in the run up to the CSR was the need for a systematic review of all homelessness spend, including that spent on supported accommodation through DWP in order to recognise the role it plays in ending homelessness, but also to highlight the need for more considered investment.
Without this, we are left seeing this CSR as a missed opportunity to lay the foundations for the fundamental change in funding and approach that the sector has been calling out for.
In the shadow of the impending supported housing standards and compliance, and the associated cost of compliance and concerns around lack of understanding at how the sector is funded, this remains a critical oversight that the sector will have to continue to make noise about in the coming months.
And while we are, of course, grateful that homelessness funding has not been cut, the failure to substantively uplift service funding is a bitter pill for many providers who have seen severe real-terms cuts across the last decade. Providers have already had to meet the cost of inflation and of increased National Insurance contributions out of their own pockets. All this while homelessness and rough sleeping continue to rise.
Back in Autumn the Budget set out a promise of large scale reform to homelessness funding and a commitment to cross-government funding. Ultimately, this CSR hasn’t delivered on this promise. But it also hasn’t closed the door on this. MHCLG, backed by the inter-ministerial taskforce, now have the chance to take the financial commitment they have and take forward those headline promises of transformation, prevention and sustainability.
At Homeless Link, as we continue to digest the detail of the CSR, our attention is now shifting to the upcoming Homelessness Strategy. We will work hard over the summer to ensure that the officials in charge of the strategy understand the needs of the sector and deliver a plan for meaningful improvement to enable the system to end homelessness for good. With your support, we will keep advocating for the change we need.
