An ambitious strategy is needed to end homelessness and rough sleeping.
The LGA is calling on the Government to adopt an ambitious and joined-up strategy to end homelessness and rough sleeping in England for good.
With the number of households owed a homelessness duty rising rapidly and temporary accommodation costs at record highs, we recently published a ‘Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Strategy Position Statement’ ahead of an expected announcement on a new cross-departmental government strategy.
The position paper highlights the challenges that councils are facing and sets out the radical reforms to policy and funding needed to prevent this crisis from worsening.
The LGA view is that the upcoming government strategy must mark a step change in ambition and action that must fully enable councils and their partners to end homelessness for good, through prevention, addressing the housing affordability crisis, and tackling the social and systemic factors that lead people into homelessness in the first place.
The scale of demand is stark. In 2023/24, 324,990 households were assessed as being owed a homelessness duty, a rise of nearly 9 per cent in just one year.
More than 131,000 households are currently living in temporary accommodation, while the gap between earnings and housing costs has widened sharply, with average house prices now standing at 7.7 times average salaries in England.
This pressure is being felt acutely by local authorities, whose spending on homelessness services has soared by £604 million in real terms since 2019/20, an increase of more than 77 per cent.
Temporary accommodation alone cost councils almost £2.3 billion in 2023/24.
We want the Government’s forthcoming cross-departmental homelessness and rough sleeping strategy to mark a clear break from current approaches, which have focused too heavily on managing crises rather than preventing them.
Homelessness cannot be tackled by councils alone, and success depends on coordinated action across central government departments, the NHS, schools, charities, communities, and with people with lived experience of homelessness.
The LGA has also warned that current funding arrangements are too fragmented, short-term and inflexible, which prevents councils from planning strategically or tailoring support to local needs.
Our position paper sets out several key reforms that councils believe are necessary. These include a long-term approach to prevention, underpinned by predictable funding that can be pooled locally and used flexibly, rather than ring-fenced for specific initiatives.
The paper also urges ministers to reform the system of temporary accommodation subsidies so that the rates paid to councils better reflect market costs, proposing an increase to 90 per cent of the prevailing local housing allowance (LHA) rate.
“Councils stand ready to deliver on homelessness and rough sleeping, but cannot solve this challenge alone ”
Alongside this, we argue that tackling the housing shortage is essential and call for a national commitment to building and reform.
The paper further highlights the need to address the financial pressures that can push households into homelessness.
It calls for LHA rates to be permanently linked to the bottom 30 per cent of local rents and a review of the benefit cap and shared accommodation rates.
We are also advocating for: an innovation hub to evaluate prevention measures; stronger alignment between homelessness policy and other national strategies; and clear accountability across government for supporting high-risk groups, such as care leavers, ex-prisoners, domestic abuse survivors and asylum seekers.
Government reforms to address some of the key challenges have been welcomed, including: Right to Buy reforms; commitments to ban ‘no fault’ evictions; introducing a multi-year social housing rent settlement; and an increased Affordable Homes Programme and homelessness funding.
Despite these, however, there is much to be done to support the commitment to work to end homelessness, and councils’ delivery sits at the heart of this.
Other LGA lobbying positions sit alongside our work on homelessness and should also be reflected in the Government’s strategy.
“Temporary accommodation alone cost councils almost £2.3 billion in 2023/24”
These include our call for a permanent extension, from 28 to 56 days, to the time asylum seekers have to leave Home Office accommodation after a decision on their claim. A pilot extension for some asylum seekers is due for review in December.
Councils also need to be engaged well in advance of any decisions on opening or closing asylum accommodation in their areas, rather than after a decision has been made.
In addition, the LGA’s position on reducing child poverty includes recommendations on taking a more preventative, upstream approach to the underlying causes of socioeconomic inequality and family hardship.
Councils stand ready to deliver on homelessness and rough sleeping, but cannot solve this challenge alone.
Homelessness prevention requires a whole-society approach: national and local government, the NHS, schools, employers, landlords, the voluntary sector and communities all have a role to play.
The LGA will continue working with councils to gather evidence, case studies and good practice to demonstrate how its proposals could deliver more affordable homes and reduce the use of temporary accommodation.
We hope the Government’s final strategy will turn the ambition to end homelessness into a concrete national mission rather than just an aspiration.
- See the LGA’s ‘Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Strategy Position Statement’ in full. Find out more about the LGA’s work on housing, planning and homelessness.