Rough Sleeping Fund Doubles to £874m With a Summit Today
The government will put a further £432m into ending rough sleeping, confirmed at Wednesday’s Budget and roughly doubling the £442m already committed. Support extends beyond March 2027 to the end of this Parliament. The first Downing Street summit on rough sleeping is held today.
This is the one new Budget measure actually published rather than briefed, and the prime minister framed it as a choice rather than a target: “Rough sleeping isn’t a fact of life. It’s a thing governments either choose to accept or don’t. Well I don’t accept it.” The housing secretary conceded the scale of the ambition — “This is a big ambition — we know that. But we will not back down” — and a housing federation is to identify at least 2,000 homes and bedspaces, with more than thirty organisations signing pledges. Three caveats belong with it. The commitment is an offer of accommodation and or support rather than a guarantee of housing, and it is not yet clear how many of those 2,000 are self-contained homes. “Doubling” is approximate, since £432m is marginally less than the £442m it follows. And the backdrop is 4,793 people recorded sleeping rough on a single night in England last autumn, the highest since the count began in 2010. The shadow housing secretary noted the prime minister missed his own pledge to end rough sleeping in Greater Manchester by 2020.