The Prime Minister has pledged what the government calls “immediate action to offer everyone who needs it a route off the streets by Christmas”, backed by an additional £102million on top of the £340million funding unveiled last month. The move follows Andy Burnham’s pledge, in his first speech after taking up post in Number 10, to end the blight of rough sleeping.
Rough sleeping numbers rise
The number of rough sleepers in England in autumn last year was estimated to be 4,793 – up 3% year-on-year. Francesca Albanese, director of policy and social change at Crisis, has worked in the sector for nearly two decades but warned: “Things have definitely got worse in the last ten years.”
She added: “When we saw welfare reform and that squeeze on housing benefit and other welfare services, it’s had a direct hit… Under normal circumstances if you have enough money to pay rent, you’re not pushed onto the streets. I’d definitely seen that lack of affordable housing really driving things and meaning that people are coming to us.”
Women hidden from official counts
A Mirror investigation in 2024 revealed how a charity census identified over a thousand women sleeping rough – nearly twice as many as government figures had earlier shown. Victoria, a 31-year-old who experienced rough sleeping, said: “The minute men realised I was vulnerable and homeless, they would begin to offer me money to do things with them. I felt unsupported, alone and suicidal.”
Lucy Campbell, assistant director at charity SHP, said: “What we really want to push is that local authorities who are going to be receiving these funds and putting strategies in place to get people off the streets aren’t just going to be operating it again on that kind of government snapshot count definition of what rough sleeping is.
“We need to be identifying people rough sleeping in different ways. We need to be undertaking gender-informed outreach and building in no wrong door approaches between different services to actually identify the women in the first place. Because we’re not likely to see them bedded down on the high street. They’re not doing that because of fear of violence and that means they are at risk of being missed by any new initiatives that are put in place to get people off the streets.”
Housing shortage key
Keir Starmer’s government announced a decade-long £39billion social and affordable homes programme. Ms Albanese said: “We’ve got to make sure that that’s unlocked quickly.” For Shelter’s policy manager, Deborah Garvie, housing is key. She said: “The biggest challenge, as with all forms of homelessness, is the dire shortage of social rent homes. So that can mean even where people are helped off the street into emergency or temporary accommodation then they’re unable to move on… into a home of their own.”
Campaigner Kerri Douglas, who has experienced rough sleeping, said: “We’ve heard this all before though with these pledges of lots of money but nothing ever gets done, does it? So it’ll be nice to see how this gets spent this time round.” Yet she does have some optimism things might be different. “I do have a bit of hope,” the 42-year-old said. “And I do think that he’s going to make a difference but I think he’s got high expectations in little timescales to be doing it.” For those out on the streets tonight, help cannot come soon enough.
