Extra £82m a year needed to end rough sleeping by 2024

The Kerslake Commission on Homelessness and Rough Sleeping warned that the government must maintain pandemic-level funding for homelessness services in order to end rough sleeping by 2024.

Ministers are being urged to continue its Everyone In scheme into the long term, and maintain the extra funding it paid during the pandemic – an estimated £82 million a year. The report claims that reducing the current funding would result in ‘an enormous lost opportunity’ for the government to keep its manifesto pledge of eliminating rough sleeping over the next three years.

Some 37,430 people were provided with a place to stay and access to health and other support services through the Everyone In scheme by January 2021, according to government statistics. The number of people housed is nearly nine times the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s pre-pandemic estimate of 4,266 rough sleepers on Britain’s streets.

Lord Bob Kerslake, the former head of the civil service, warned that if the scheme is cut back or scrapped, there could be a post-pandemic surge of people sleeping on the streets during the winter.

The commission is calling for the £20 Universal Credit boost, that was introduced as a temporary measure during the pandemic, to be maintained. It also says that street homelessness should be treated as a public health and housing priority and the government should establish a clear position that implementing its NRPF policy ‘must stop short of causing destitution’ for people who cannot access benefits due to their immigration status.

Lord Kerslake said: “If we fail to learn the lessons of Everyone In, all the signs from the commission’s work are that the situation will get worse, not better, and homelessness and rough sleeping will increase. That would be an enormous lost opportunity for the government to deliver on its rough sleeping commitment, and a personal tragedy for those affected.

“We are at a pivotal moment. I fervently hope that the government does the right thing and takes forward the recommendations in this interim report.”