The Government's Autumn Budget and the increased ambitions to end homelessness
It has been an exceptionally busy summer in the world of homelessness support. Announcements, ambitions and Great North Run endorsements have been flying out of Number 10 every other day, and you would be forgiven to have missed the window for representations to the Treasury for the Autumn Budget nestled in the middle of it all.
But fear not – the Homeless Link policy team have been busy in the background ensuring the needs of the sector are represented to the Treasury. This blog provides a brief overview of the asks we have presented to the new Chancellor. If you’re interested in learning more, you can read our full submission here.
The budget announcements are scheduled for the 28th October, and we will produce a full roundup blog when the time comes. It’s also a great time to sign up to our policy and campaigns newsletter so that a roundup of what’s happening in Parliament can arrive straight to your inbox every fortnight alongside a summary of our most recent work and ways for you to get involved.
Everyone in by Christmas?
Like you, the team at Homeless Link have been thrilled to see so much political attention on the topic of rough sleeping and for this ambition to be backed by new money. There has already been no end of blogs and explainers of the new Prime Minister’s pledge to offer everyone a route off the streets by Christmas, and I won’t attempt to re-hash those here. For Treasury, our focus has been on ensuring this money is able to make a meaningful difference, ensuring it is channelled to the approaches we know work best.
Because of this we have foregrounded the need for the first phase of the Rough Sleeping Programme to deliver self-contained emergency accommodation, not just mattresses on the floor. We know that the security and dignity of accommodation is often just as important as how many beds are available, and we share the concerns from across the sector that the new programme isn’t ambitious enough in delivering this.
This is a fast-evolving area and we anticipate that, by the time the budget rolls around, we will have much more detail on how the programme is being implemented. Hearing from you is a hugely important part of that – so, if you are able, please join our policy drop-in at 11am on Monday 5th October to tell us more about what’s happening in your area.
New money, same problems
The budget provides a key opportunity for us to flag the financial challenges faced by the sector. The cracks run deep, and being asked to deliver a new emergency accommodation programme on top – with all its implications for staffing, resources and move-on options - could make this worse rather than better.
There are various long-standing financial issues that we have flagged in our submission. The risk of imminent closure due to cost increases and budget pressures remains a central problem for the sector, with 41% of accommodation providers and 46% of day centres at risk of shutting their doors.
Local authority crises also continue to impose an outsized risk to the viability of some services, with false-economy decisions being made about Housing Benefit during a time when providers should be growing rather than shrinking. We know a number of local authorities have ramped up their scrutiny of Housing Benefit claims, leading to long delays and payment refusals that threaten the ability to deliver accommodation at all. This is a live topic and one we’re really keen to stay abreast of, so if any of these issues sound familiar please get in touch.
Fixing the foundations
The problems faced by the sector are numerous and changing, and the Treasury has a huge role to play in designing a better future. It is therefore crucially important that Government re-prioritises its evaluation of finances in the sector, and we have once again taken the opportunity to call for a recommitment to deliver the previously-promised Value for Money Review of homelessness spending.
We have also called for a long-term commitment to a housing-led system, which can only happen with Treasury’s buy-in. This means a system which strives to deliver suitable housing for everyone, including through Housing First and long-term supported accommodation where necessary.
Lots of our thinking here is aligned with IPPR’s recent briefing, which provides an accessible (and brief!) overview of what a housing-led system would mean. This is aligned with our long-term asks, representing a move away from crisis-driven systems and into a system of prevention where the right housing is recognised as a fundamental part of a healthy life.
Clearly, this would have implications for the sector and we have therefore asked for a long-term vision with funding across ten years to make it achievable. We are clear, however, that long-term funding should not be static, and that Treasury must plan for inflationary uplifts and flexibility when the geographies and profiles of need shift.
Finally, and fundamentally to any prevention-led system, we have asked for the social security changes that make all of this possible – unfreezing Local Housing Allowance, abolishing the Shared Accommodation rate, raising the benefit cap and benchmarking Universal Credit levels against an Essentials Guarantee. Long-time listeners will recognise these as standing items in our budget work – if this Government is serious about preventing and ending homelessness, perhaps we will finally see them delivered.
