An open letter to the chancellor signed by almost 80 homelessness and housing organisations warns that services across the country are facing a ‘perilous funding cliff-edge’.
The organisations are calling for a rollover of existing homelessness funding into 2025-26 in this month’s budget to give the sector ‘certainty’. Otherwise almost £1bn is set to leave the sector next April, states the letter, which was coordinated by Homeless Link.
The 2021 spending review period, through which the government has provided grant funds to deliver homelessness and rough sleeping services, is about to come to an end, with the ‘vast majority’ of funding commitments set to expire by next April. These include £548m in rough sleeping initiative funding, £435m in rough sleeping accommodation programme funding, £13m in night shelter transformation fund money, £7m in voluntary and community frontline sector funding, and more. ‘It equates to almost £1bn due to leave the homelessness sector by the end of the financial year,’ the letter warns. ‘Without an extension, this would represent the most significant setback in progress towards ending homelessness and rough sleeping in recent history.’
Alongside increases in all forms of homelessness, the risks included large-scale loss of skilled staff, trusted providers leaving the market and the end of well-established local partnerships, says the letter. The signatories are also calling for a systematic, cross-departmental review of all homelessness-related spending in order to develop a ‘consolidated, ring-fenced’ funding system from 2026-27 onwards.
The number of people estimated to be sleeping rough in England on a single night in autumn last year was already up by more than a quarter on the previous year, according to official figures from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities. According to ONS statistics from 2022, almost two in five deaths of homeless people are drug-related.
‘Everyone needs a safe, secure place to live,’ the letter states. ‘But rough sleeping rose by 27 per cent in 2023 and 60 per cent since 2021. If it keeps rising at the current rate, numbers in 2024 will be similar to the 2017 peak.’
‘The sheer number of organisations who’ve signed this letter shows how much anxiety the funding cliff-edge is causing homelessness services across the country,’ said Homeless Link CEO Rick Henderson. ‘Organisations are already considering redundancies and scaling back services. The autumn budget is the government’s final opportunity to give the sector some certainty and prevent the inevitable surge in homelessness that will come if services are forced to close their doors from March.’
Beyond the next financial year there were also ‘deep flaws’ in the current system of funding, he added. It was ‘inefficient and complex, comprising a patchwork of different pots which focus on short-term crisis interventions at the expense of preventing people from experiencing homeless in the first place.’ A ring-fenced funding system would give the sector the stability to ‘effectively prevent and end people’s homelessness, saving lives and reducing strain on health and emergency services in the process’, he stated.
A Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesperson told the Guardian that the government had ‘inherited homelessness levels which are far too high’ and that it was ‘taking action by setting up a dedicated inter-ministerial group chaired by the deputy prime minister that brings together ministers from across government to develop a long-term strategy to get us back on track to end homelessness. Local authorities and their partners deliver vital work to tackle rough sleeping, and funding allocations will be set out following the budget.’
Open letter available here