The Government’s announcement today of an additional £84m for homelessness services is welcome. In our hard-pressed sector extra funding is always welcome, but this in year top up must be followed up rapidly with long term funding security and the promised cross government homelessness strategy.
Our members will be particularly appreciative that a significant portion of the new funding is reserved for Voluntary, Community and Faith organisations. A breakdown of the new funding provided by the Department for Housing, Communities and Local Government outlines:
- Nearly £70m uplift to the Rough Sleeping Prevention and Recovery Grant across 62 local authorities including £5.8m to 12 strategic authorities. Of this 20% is reserved for the voluntary sector.
- Nearly £11m on supporting children experiencing homelessness
- £3m top-up for the Rough Sleeping Drug and Alcohol Treatment grant
- £200,000 for the Voluntary and Community and Frontline Sector Grant
New funding is desperately needed
When 76% of services, according to Homeless Link’s Support for Single Homeless People in England 2024 report, are experiencing financial pressures that will negatively impact on service delivery, any extra funding is extremely important.
And we’d urge local authorities receiving this extra fund to prioritise stabilising existing services in their area. In the same report I mention above, almost half (47%) of homelessness support services surveyed told us they risked having to close services due to financial pressures.
Particularly with winter beginning soon, this could be a disaster. It is vital local authorities use this extra funding to stop services collapsing when we need them most.
We need to move away from sticking plasters towards long-term funding and long-term solutions
However, as welcome as this additional funding is, our members need the security of long-term funding settlements. Long-term thinking on how to reduce the record levels of homelessness we are currently facing – which is placing unprecedented pressures on services – is also urgently required.
The Government’s upcoming Homelessness Strategy is a chance to deliver a fundamentally different, well-coordinated approach to working with frontline services. We need measures that both address the current crisis and lay the foundations for a country free from homelessness. This includes real accountability for all arms of government on reducing and preventing homelessness.
The funding model for homelessness support and prevention services also needs to be overhauled, so services are empowered to focus on and invest in long-term solutions, rather than being stuck in a constant cycle of crisis management.
Delivering a message to the Interministerial Group on Homelessness
In fact these are exactly the messages we today are delivering to every Westminster department involved in the Interministerial Group on Tackling Rough Sleeping and Homelessness. This is the group of Ministers who have been tasked with delivering the Homelessness Strategy.
To mark World Homelessness Day, we are handing in our letters at Departments across Whitehall to remind Ministers that they have a real responsibility to put reducing homelessness at the core of their work. To work together to ensure frontline services have the resources they need to get back on track to ending homelessness.
As we await the new Homelessness Strategy, funding to support members right now remains extremely important. The funding announced today will support services to assist those in need in communities across the country.
I hope though that by World Homelessness Day 2026, homelessness services are operating with much more certainty. Certainty both on their long-term funding, and on how they fit into the government’s plan to build a country free from homelessness.
