Homelessness: Funding

Chris Vince Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I thank the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for securing the debate—Mr Vickers, you and I know he got a real grilling from the Backbench Business Committee when he proposed the debate. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Wavertree (Paula Barker), the chair of the APPG, for her work in this important area.

I declare an interest: before coming to this place, I was a project outreach worker for a brilliant homelessness charity in my Harlow constituency called Streets2Homes. I pay particular tribute to its chief executive officer, Kerrie Eastman, to her manager, Lisa Twomey, and to my former colleagues Jamie and Alice for all their work to support people in Harlow who are rough sleeping or sofa surfing—as we often discuss, sofa surfers are the hidden homeless.

My role was very varied, but one thing I had to do was go out into the community—sometimes into a wooded area, and sometimes into industrial estates—to find people who were rough sleeping, to encourage them to register with our charity and to support them into secure accommodation. I echo the comments made by Members across the House about the importance of the Housing First approach to tackling rough sleeping.

I also welcome the Government’s commitment to an additional £1 billion of funding to tackle rough sleeping. However, we also need to recognise that there are a multitude of reasons for people becoming homeless. Sometimes, it is addiction to drugs, alcohol or gambling, and sometimes it is mental health issues. My hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher) correctly identified the root causes coming down to trauma. How we support people who have faced trauma is really important.

Before I worked for that homelessness charity, as people know, I was a teacher. I do not want to get into the politics of why I left teaching, because this has not been that sort of debate. However, what I will say is that, within my first two weeks of working for a home- lessness charity, a man came in who had recently become homeless. He was a former teacher who had had a mental breakdown, turned to alcohol and found himself homeless. It was a seminal moment for me, because I thought that it is only by the grace of God that our positions were not reversed. There is a saying that we are only ever two payslips away from homelessness—with the cost of living crisis and the increased costs of the private rented sector, it may now be fewer than two payslips. It really struck me that we could all potentially be affected by this issue.

Harlow council is in the 40% most deprived lower-tier authorities, and at any one time there could be more than 250 people in temporary accommodation. When I was a district councillor in Harlow, one of the last questions I asked was about the cost of temporary accommodation. Harlow is quite a small district council, but it still cost roughly £2 million a year to house people in temporary accommodation. Clearly, if we can get this right, there is a saving to be made.

My wife is currently a teacher, and she speaks about having to visit families in temporary accommodation. We recognise how difficult it is for young people growing up in such accommodation, as my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme mentioned. It hugely affects their schooling.

I echo the comments made by the hon. Member for Harrow East—there is Harrow-Harlow agreement in Westminster Hall today—on the issues affecting people leaving prison. We have had a number of people come into Streets2Homes who had been released from prison with nowhere to go. Clearly, if we want people not to reoffend, that is a huge issue.

I am running out of time, so I will quickly say that I support the Housing First approach, but I am concerned about what supported accommodation is and what it is not. I am concerned about people claiming to provide supported accommodation and not actually providing it. Under the last Labour Government, we brought down the number of rough sleepers. Let us make sure this Labour Government do the same.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers, and to take part in this debate about the adequacy of funding to support homeless people. At the outset, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), for securing this debate. I know how important this topic is to him, and his forensic opening speech this morning emphatically underlined that. I am confident I speak for all sides of the House when I say how appreciated his tireless efforts have been to address the tragedy of homelessness. I also thank all hon. Members who have contributed to this debate.

Just over a month ago, I had the pleasure of coming to this place and hearing 17 speeches from a range of hon. Members on the issue of homelessness. Some of them are here again today and some are not. I said at the time that homelessness is a “social tragedy” wherever it occurs and for whatever reason. That we are back here again shows both the importance of this issue to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East and its significance to hon. Members across the House.

Unfortunately, since the last debate, things have got worse rather than better. The future cost of living looks worse—certainly in the wake of last week’s rather gloomy Budget. The future of house building and the Government’s manifesto promise to build 1.5 million homes appear to be in dire straits, and the state of local government finances again appears bleak and unlikely to improve. On top of all of that, the long-awaited homelessness strategy, first pledged in the Government’s manifesto a year and a half ago, continues to be late and remains unpublished.

The strategy was first promised to us in 2024, with the publication repeatedly said to be forthcoming. We were then repeatedly told by the Minister’s predecessor that it was due for publication following the conclusion of the spending review—which was six months ago. In a parliamentary question answered just last week we continued to be told that it will be published “later this year”. It is 2 December today and the year is running out. It may be advent, the season of waiting, but there are many who consider this to be an unacceptable and damaging delay, particularly the charities and homeless people waiting for the Government to take serious action. It would be a very welcome early Christmas present if the Minister were to announce its publication this morning.

In saying that, I acknowledge that the Government have not been totally idle. They have introduced some additional funding: a £69.9 million uplift to the rough sleeping prevention and recovery grant, an additional £10.9 million for supporting children experiencing homelessness, and £3 million for the rough sleeping drug and alcohol treatment programme. The funding is welcome, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East said in his opening speech and others have mentioned, funding must come with strategy and purpose and that is something we are yet to see.

As I said in this Chamber in October:

“prevention must be at the heart of any national strategy for tackling homelessness”.—[Official Report, 21 October 2025; Vol. 773, c. 312WH.]

That was a central focus in the last Government’s approach which produced £2.4 billion of funding to tackle rough sleeping and homelessness including the rough sleeping initiative and £547 million over the period from April 2022 to March 2025 before schemes such as the RSI were rolled up into one by the current Government. The rough sleeping initiative provided locally led tailored support and services for rough sleepers, providing direction and strategy at the most local levels.

The Minister’s Department has so far failed to provide itself and its fellow Departments with a national strategy. Simply spending money will not do the job, and funding without purpose or direction can actually damage efforts to achieve the critical goal of ending homelessness.

Much of the responsibility and funding for tackling homelessness lies with local government. Bills for homelessness accommodation have soared to £3.8 billion across 2024-2025—a 25% increase in a single year. There are now a record number of people in temporary accommodation, including 169,050 children in England—a 12% increase in a year. The result of that is that councils are now warning that homelessness poses one of the biggest threats to their financial viability.

Homelessness is a statutory demand-led and highly acute pressure on local government. The Government’s answer so far has not been to provide more support, but to take money away from many councils as part of their so-called fair funding formula. In introducing what my right hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Sir James Cleverly) has called their “unfair funding” model for local authorities the Government are funnelling money away from councils predominantly in the south to send to councils predominantly in the north. It is hard to see that as anything other than a partisan cash grab and a punitive targeting of many well-run councils, especially penalising those who have historically kept council taxes low and controlled spending better.

Some of the most affected areas, including the south- east, are witnessing a large rise in homelessness and simultaneously a potentially catastrophic drop in funding thanks to the fair funding policy. How does that reconcile with the need to go further to tackle this soaring issue? The answer is that it does not. It certainly does not help that councils are being punished and losing money for the crime of being comparatively well run when they are still trying to play their role in providing temporary accommodation to those 126,040 households.

[Chris Vince]

Will the shadow Minister give way on that point?

[Gareth Bacon]

I will not. I apologise to the hon. Gentleman, because I know he cares passionately about this issue, but we are running out of time. I need to leave time for the Minister to respond and for my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East to conclude.

The figure of 126,040 households is a 15.7% increase on 2023. The Government need to rethink this policy for the sake of local government and those who have a statutory requirement to help. It is not just local authorities that are under additional pressure. Homeless Link found that thanks to the Chancellor’s national insurance hike, the 2024 autumn Budget removed between £50 million and £60 million of vital funding from smaller organisations that provide homelessness services. It is sad that the Government’s announcements on homelessness funding, as welcome as they are, to some extent merely fill the gaps that the Treasury created.

It is also important that the Government work to make housing more affordable, including with proper funding for social and affordable homes. Unfortunately, the Government are not making the progress that they promised. On funding for affordable housing, despite the Chancellor’s boast when announcing the package at the previous spending review, the Institute for Fiscal Studies noted:

“Upon closer inspection the promise of £39bn over 10 years is less generous than on first appearance…The small print suggests spending of about £3bn a year over the next three years, which is not a million miles away from what is currently spent on the AHP”—

affordable homes programme—

“This is why enormous-sounding numbers should always merit further scrutiny”.

The Government are also failing on making social and affordable homes available. Figures show that, with the lowest number of additional homes for nearly a decade, the Government are on track to fall well short of the target of 1.5 million additional homes in this Parliament, possibly not even reaching 1 million. That is considerably worse than the 2.5 million new homes delivered by the previous Government, including 1 million in the previous Parliament, of which 750,000 were affordable homes. That was despite having to grapple with the pandemic for the better part of two years.

In conclusion, it is clear that Ministers must work more quickly and effectively to provide local authorities and charities with the strategy and direction they need. It is vital to move at a greater pace to ease the temporary accommodation crisis, get more social and affordable homes built in the most affected areas, and finally publish the homelessness strategy first promised in July 2024 but repeatedly delayed to the detriment of those relying on it to work. I look forward to the Minister’s comments.