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14h ago

Labour Unveils £3.5bn Homelessness Plan To Halve Long‑Term Rough Sleeping By The End Of This Parliament

Charities warn the strategy lacks sufficient new funding, with key levers such as unfreezing housing benefit left out.

Labour's new strategy is aiming to halve rough sleeping and step up efforts to prevent homelessness. Image: Milan Cobanov / Unsplash
One in 153 people in England are now experiencing homelessness. Image: Jon Tyson / Unsplash
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A long-term, cross-government strategy is intended to turnaround rising homelessness numbers over the past few years. Image: Jon Tyson / Unsplash

Overview

  • The National Plan to End Homelessness sets legal duties for public bodies to work together, with targets to stop discharges from hospitals to the street and to halve first‑night homelessness among people leaving prison.
  • Ministers pledge to end unlawful use of B&Bs for families, require local action plans from councils, and provide a £50m prevention grant alongside targeted support for areas under greatest pressure.
  • The package includes £124m for supported housing to help more than 2,500 people off the streets, a £15m rough sleeping innovation fund, £37m for community services, and £950m to deliver 5,000 temporary homes, plus £30m to curb poor emergency accommodation.
  • Crisis and other groups say only about £100m appears to be genuinely new money and criticize the absence of commitments to unfreeze Local Housing Allowance, expand Housing First nationally, or rapidly increase social home building.
  • Shelter estimates 382,618 people in England are currently homeless, including 175,025 children, alongside official figures showing 132,410 households in temporary accommodation in June 2025 and 4,667 people sleeping rough in autumn 2024.