On 26 November 2025, Chancellor Rachel Reeves delivered the Labour Government’s annual Budget statement.
Rick Henderson, CEO of Homeless Link, the national membership body for frontline homelessness organisations in England, commented:
“With the cross-government Homelessness Strategy due to be published in the coming weeks, we’ve been looking forward to a Budget that enables a whole-government approach to ending and preventing homelessness.
“And with levels of homelessness continuing to rise, a Budget that empowers frontline services to scale up their support for people facing the trauma and insecurity of homelessness is urgently needed.
“In today’s Budget, we saw a number of positive measures that could help us move beyond the current crisis.”
“We’re very pleased to see the Treasury commit to a review of government funding for homelessness services, including how to improve the supply of good quality supported housing. This has been a key ask of our Breaking the Cycle campaign, and is a vital step in building a more effective approach to homelessness support and prevention. We look forward to a process geared towards ensuring services are fully resourced to deliver our shared mission of ending and preventing homelessness.”
“The commitment to introduce new earned income disregards in Housing Benefit for claimants in supported housing is also a welcome step. If implemented correctly, this change has the potential to remedy a long-standing flaw in the benefits system which means those living in supported housing can be left financially worse-off when they start working.”
“The removal of the two-child limit on child benefit also has the potential to significantly reduce child poverty, and so act to prevent homelessness upstream.”
“There are areas where we would have liked to see the Chancellor go further. The sector has long been calling for reform to Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rates and it is deeply disappointing to see no movement on this in today’s statement. This will put more people at risk of homelessness with numbers already at record levels.”
“Beyond today’s announcements, we urge the Treasury to build on the positive measures announced today by continuing to play a full and committed role in the Interministerial Group on Tackling Rough Sleeping and Homelessness - both as it finalises the design of the cross-government Homelessness Strategy and begins implementation.
“Only with a central commitment from the Treasury to marshal the resources of government will we turn the tide on record levels of homelessness that continue to devastate lives.”
