Health Services: Homelessness

(asked on 2nd January 2026) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, will his Department bring forward a dedicated homelessness health strategy.


Answered by
Ashley Dalton Portrait
Ashley Dalton
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
This question was answered on 12th January 2026

The Government’s commitments to improving health outcomes and access to healthcare services for people experiencing homelessness are set out in the cross-Government strategy, A National Plan to End Homelessness, published in December 2025, available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/a-national-plan-to-end-homelessness/a-national-plan-to-end-homelessness

We are committed to its ambition that no one should leave a public institution into homelessness. In health, this means ensuring that no one eligible for homelessness assistance is discharged to the street after a hospital stay by embedding best practice across National Health Service and local systems and working jointly with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government on a delivery plan. We are also committing to wider measures in the strategy to tackle health inequalities, including improving access to mental health and substance misuse services, and updating statutory guidance to strengthen safeguarding responsibilities for people experiencing homelessness.

For this reason, we currently do not have plans to introduce a dedicated homelessness health strategy.

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