Policy paper

Ending rough sleeping for good

Updated 5 September 2022

Applies to England

Presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities by Command of Her Majesty

September 2022

Joint ministerial foreword

No one in our society should have to suffer the injustice of living a life on the streets, deprived of shelter, warmth and basic necessities.

One of the defining parts of our mission to level up communities and afford everyone a chance to get on in life is a commitment not just to continue reducing rough sleeping, but to end it for good.

Working with our partners in local government and across the housing, health and voluntary sectors, we have taken significant strides towards that goal in the last few years.

Our collective efforts at the height of the pandemic saw tens of thousands of people helped off the streets with two thirds moved into long-term housing.

We’ve worked hard to maintain that momentum and the latest numbers illustrate that even a problem as intractable as rough sleeping is solvable with the will and shared commitment to succeed. The most recent snapshot data from 2021 shows that rough sleeping has decreased by 49% since 2017 – an 8-year low.

It is right that we celebrate just how much progress has been made, while paying tribute to the army of frontline workers who made this progress possible.

But we all recognise that this journey is far from over.

We know that many people sleeping rough suffer from poor mental health and substance misuse.

Some are caught in a vicious cycle between prison and a life on the streets.

Others are leaving our care system without a fixed destination, uncertain of who to turn to for support.

The government is determined to meet these issues head-on, with an approach that prevents people from reaching the streets in the first place.

It’s a task that demands every government department works in unison, with the resources to match the ambition. That is exactly what this Strategy sets out.

It commits an unprecedented £2 billion over the next 3 years to intensify our efforts to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping. For the first time, this Strategy also clearly defines success; our end goal is for rough sleeping to be prevented wherever possible but when it does occur, it must be rare, brief and non-recurring.

This Strategy deploys all the tools at our disposal, including the Homelessness Reduction Act, to prevent more people from finding themselves without a safe roof over their heads.

We want to ensure that those leaving a public institution – whether it’s prison, hospital or care – don’t find themselves out on the streets with no place to go.

We believe this Strategy will put in place the structures to protect more people from the trauma of rough sleeping. Where it does happen, however, we want it to be met with a rapid and tailored response every time – putting a roof over the person’s head, supporting their recovery, and helping them move away from life on the streets for good.

In support of that goal, we are providing up to half a billion pounds of new funding for our flagship Rough Sleeping Initiative – championing partnership working between local councils and the voluntary sector, alongside health services and other agencies to make sure that no one falls through the cracks.

We also recognise that a societal problem as long-standing and entrenched as rough sleeping demands long-term solutions.

The Strategy therefore sets out our plan to put the right kind of accommodation in place to help people properly rebuild their lives over time – backed by new funding for the Single Homelessness Accommodation Programme. This will especially benefit young people at risk of becoming homeless.

Finally, this Strategy takes a whole system approach to tackling rough sleeping.

It recognises the fact that people rarely fall into a life on the streets overnight – it’s often driven by a range of structural and personal issues including unemployment, housing affordability, poor mental health, drug misuse and alcohol dependency.

That’s why this Strategy commits us to investing not just in accommodation, but in better drug and alcohol treatment, improved mental health

provision and more help into work schemes. This will be complemented by strengthened partnerships with employers, jobcentres, police and tighter join-up between housing, homelessness and healthcare services.

Over the last few years, we’ve gone much further and faster in reducing rough sleeping than many thought possible.

With this bold, new Strategy, empowered partners on the ground ready to deliver, and a broad coalition of government departments wholly committed to the task ahead, we will finish what we started and, together, we will end rough sleeping for good.

Signed by:

The Rt Hon Greg Clark MP Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities

The Rt Hon Thérèse Coffey MP Secretary of State for Work and Pensions

The Rt Hon Steve Barclay MP Secretary of State for Health and Social Care

The Rt Hon James Cleverly MP Secretary of State for Education

The Rt Hon Dominic Raab MP Deputy Prime Minister, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice

The Rt Hon Ben Wallace MP Secretary of State for Defence

The Rt Hon Priti Patel MP Home Secretary

Johnny Mercer MP Minister for Veterans’ Affairs

Foreword from the Minister for Rough Sleeping and Housing

Like any disaster, the loss of housing can strike with little forewarning.

I have seen this happen up close during my years working at the YMCA Birmingham, before I became an MP. I saw that, while what unites people sleeping rough is the lack of a home, the causes and consequences of how they got there always vary.

For some it can be the loss of a job, the break-up of a relationship or as a result of a traumatic incident, and for others it could be addiction issues with alcohol or drugs.

But seeing that world first-hand also left me convinced that rough sleeping – with all its complexities – is solvable with the right approach.

We saw this approach during the pandemic when local and national government worked hand in hand with organisations across the UK to bring people sleeping rough out of harm’s way of a deadly virus.

We see this approach day-in, day-out in the selfless dedication of delivery partners and the voluntary, community and faith sectors who work with local authorities up and down the country to improve the lives of people on the streets.

And we are going to take this approach into the future through the Strategy you are reading today.

The Rough Sleeping Strategy represents our vision for how we end a social ill that has persisted for centuries and end it for good.

By taking a holistic view of the problem, by focusing on prevention and by looking at the causes as well as the symptoms, it sets out how everyone- from central government, local leaders, rough sleeping coordinators, health workers, social workers, volunteers, prison workers and housing officers – can work together to not only get people off the streets, but to stop them ending up there in the first place.

The latest annual statistics give us cause for optimism, showing that the numbers of people on the streets is at an 8-year low. But statistics are part of the story, and never the whole story. If we peer behind the numbers, there are still too many lives shattered by the lack of a home.

But I believe this Strategy, and the £2 billion of investment behind it, give us the policy, funding and intellectual horsepower to match the scale of the challenge. We have our starting gun, let’s go and do it.

Eddie Hughes MP Minister for Rough Sleeping and Housing

Executive summary

We want this country to be a world leader in its approach to ending rough sleeping. This means more effective support to prevent rough sleeping happening in the first place, and a tailored offer of support where it does happen, so people can build an independent life off the streets. It also means the public can be assured that local authorities, working with the voluntary, faith and community sectors, have options in place to intervene swiftly when someone is sleeping rough, should they choose to accept the offer of support. It also means that local authorities and other agencies can promote a positive public realm, where everybody in the community can feel safe and prosper.

Rough sleeping is a highly complex issue and no country in the world can claim they never have people sleeping rough on their streets. We are determined to build on our widely lauded response to the pandemic and ensure we put in place a system that means that no one should have to sleep rough, while also recognising the complexity that leads to an individual sleeping on the streets in the first place. We have developed, for the first time, a clear and defined vision for ending rough sleeping, which is that it is prevented wherever possible, and where it does occur it is rare, brief and non-recurrent. The comprehensive actions set out in this strategy will build on progress to date and set in train the change needed across central government and local partners to deliver an end to rough sleeping by the end of the Parliament.

We listened to the voices of experts and those who represent people with lived experience in the development of this strategy. This included a programme of roundtable sessions chaired by senior leaders from across the sector and local government and working closely with the Rough Sleeping Advisory Panel, an expert group made up of leading charities and service delivery organisations from across the sector.

Case for action

1. No-one should have to sleep on our streets. People in this country have a right to expect decency and dignity in their lives, and, at the most basic level, that should mean having a roof over their heads. We have a moral imperative to end rough sleeping and to end it for good. People experiencing rough sleeping are facing extreme deprivation and we will not level up the country if we do not reduce these deepest, often entrenched, inequalities and support the most vulnerable.

2. Whilst it is right to expect that individuals take responsibility for the consequences of their actions, we have a proud history in this country of showing compassion to those in need - and we must continue in this vein, to give people the opportunity and support to rebuild their lives. Rough sleeping can be a vicious cycle, which can perpetuate existing vulnerabilities and health needs. We know that there are multiple, complex and overlapping drivers behind rough sleeping - for example, in a sample of people who had experienced rough sleeping, (through the Rough Sleeping Questionnaire 2020), 82% of respondents self-reported having a mental health need, 60% a current substance misuse need and 26% spent time in care as a child.

3. There is not just a moral case for action. Ending rough sleeping is the right thing to do to ease the strain on health and other public services and to enable everyone in a community, including those who are homeless, to feel safe and for our cities, towns and high streets to prosper. Support and services for people who experience rough sleeping come at significant cost, and reducing rough sleeping therefore reduces that cost. It will also deliver benefits across the system, such as through reducing reoffending.

4. This government has made the unprecedented commitment to end rough sleeping within this Parliament. We remain steadfastly committed to that goal. Working with local partners, we have delivered remarkable progress so far. In autumn 2021 rough sleeping levels were at an 8-year low. The rate of rough sleeping in England also compares well internationally – there were 4 people sleeping rough on a single night in autumn 2021 per 100,000 people in England, compared to 3 people sleeping rough per 100,000 people in South Korea and Japan, which are both countries with comparable data collection methodologies and who have the lowest rates globally. The USA has 69 people sleeping rough per 100,000 people. When comparing across Europe, large cities in England, such as London and Manchester, have lower rough sleeping rates than large cities in France (Paris) and Germany (Berlin). For example, in 2021 in the city of Paris, 128 people slept rough per 100,000 people^{[footnote 1]}, and in Berlin, 55 per 100,000^{[footnote 2]} – compared to 13 people sleeping rough per 100,000 in inner London and 8 people sleeping rough per 100,000 in Manchester^{[footnote 3]}.

5. During the pandemic, our rapid work to protect people who were experiencing rough sleeping is recognised to have saved hundreds of lives. This was possible because of significant investment made before the pandemic to improve tailored rough sleeping services locally, underpinned by the government’s Rough Sleeping Initiative and working hand in hand with local authorities, the homelessness and health sectors. This led to transformative change and new partnerships on the ground, for instance substance misuse services and health partners working closely with the homelessness sector to deliver services where they were needed most. It is their dedication, commitment and passion that has transformed the lives of thousands of vulnerable people.

6. Despite these achievements, we have further to go to end rough sleeping for good. We know it will not be easy. The public rightly expects that vulnerable individuals sleeping rough should be supported to create and sustain a life away from the streets, and our ambitions should be to support these individuals on a path to self-sufficiency and reduce their need to rely on state support. Many factors drive rough sleeping. We therefore need the whole of government, and its partners, to work together effectively to end rough sleeping: central government departments, local authorities, the voluntary, community and faith sectors, health partners, the criminal justice system, including police, jobcentres, employers, and the public. Government must lead from the front in encouraging partnership working, but we expect local political leaders, such as Mayors, Police and Crime Commissioners and council leaders, in collaboration with their partners, to take the lead in delivery and accountability for local rough sleeping outcomes.

7. Preventing rough sleeping is essential. We need to make sure that we not only deal with the immediate needs of people experiencing rough sleeping, but that we also look at the drivers of rough sleeping and develop an approach across central and local government and the wider system to prevent it happening in the first place. We know that 40% of people sleeping rough are new to the streets each month, and we need to tackle the individual and structural factors that can contribute to this. This is why the government’s 10-year Drugs Strategy ‘From Harm to Hope’, published last year, recognises the strong links between drug misuse, homelessness and rough sleeping and sets out an ambitious, whole-system approach to addiction recovery, including significant investment in substance misuse treatment services to help us deliver a world class treatment and recovery system.

8. We also acknowledge that some instances of rough sleeping can cause legitimate public concern and can be associated with anti-social behaviour or other criminality, alongside concern for the welfare of those involved – and in some instances, this can undermine people’s pride of place in their communities. It is therefore right that the police, local authorities and other agencies respond effectively to address public concern, including on issues such as begging and engaging vulnerable people – especially people with the most entrenched and complex rough sleeping needs who may otherwise refuse support.

9. Based on the case for action, our strategy is a whole system approach to deliver:

• better prevention, so that you can be confident that fewer people sleep rough in the first place. We need to protect people from the damage that rough sleeping causes, providing early support across all parts of the system. This includes our aim that nobody should leave a public institution to the streets.
• swift and effective intervention, so that if you see a person sleeping rough and connect them to help, either via StreetLink or directly with their council, you know they should get a tailored offer of support which meets their needs.
• extra help to aid recovery for those that need it, so you can have confidence that services are working together to deliver the help people need to get off the streets and stay off the streets for good. We recognise the importance of a stable home, which is why we are continuing to deliver the Rough Sleeping Accommodation Programme – the largest ever investment by the government into longer-term accommodation for people experiencing rough sleeping. However, this must be matched by the right help, such as tailored mental health and substance misuse support, and a holistic approach from all areas of the system.
• a more transparent and joined-up system, so you can be assured that everyone involved across the system is doing all they can to deliver these goals, and so that you can better hold those responsible to account. This includes learning lessons from best practice to create a world-leading response to rough sleeping.

Our Strategy to end rough sleeping

10. This strategy sets out how the whole of government is taking action to meet our ambition to end rough sleeping, reflecting on the significant progress that has been made since the 2018 Rough Sleeping Strategy. We have made huge progress – rough sleeping levels have halved since 2017 and we have created the infrastructure locally, driven by significant investment through the Rough Sleeping Initiative, to embed an approach based on what is needed at a local level and what we know works. What’s more is that local partners across the system, from health to criminal justice partners, are working together like never before to reduce rough sleeping, with the challenges of the pandemic driving the join-up that’s needed to deliver results – and this must continue.

11. We must build on these successes and ensure the good practice that is helping people off the streets is continued and expanded; and we set out how we will support that in this strategy. However, we also need a step change in how the system is working to tackle rough sleeping if we are to end it for good. We need all those involved in central government and locally working together to ensure better prevention of rough sleeping, targeted help where it does happen, and a route to an independent life off the streets so that no one should have to sleep rough. This strategy will build on what works and will bring forward new measures to deliver the step change required to end rough sleeping, by:

• Defining what ending rough sleeping means, underpinned by a new data- led framework to measure it. We will have ended rough sleeping when it is prevented wherever possible, and where it does occur it is rare, brief and non-recurrent. Based on this definition, we will roll-out nationally a trailblazing data-led framework, developed with the What Works Centre (the Centre for Homelessness Impact), that will mean for the first time all partners know what is required to end rough sleeping in their area. It will set out the breadth of metrics that will be used to measure progress, so that places can identify where specific action is needed to drive improved performance and respond.
• £2 billion investment over the next 3 years, including an expanded £500 million Rough Sleeping Initiative over 3 years, so local areas can provide the tailored support needed to end rough sleeping and deliver long-term change through multi-year funding. We will also deliver a £12 million Test and Learn programme to trial innovative approaches and test what works to reduce homelessness and rough sleeping. The funding will also allow us to both continue successful existing programmes and introduce new measures to address gaps. These measures are detailed in the bullets below.
• A new ‘prevention first’ approach that means people are better prevented from sleeping rough in the first place. We will fully embed the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, so that more people are prevented from reaching a homelessness crisis, backed by £316 million in 2022/23 alone. We will bring forward investment to help ensure no-one leaves a public institution to the streets, including through national roll-out of transitional accommodation and wider support so that no one leaves prison for the streets. We will also work with sector partners to develop a new framework for identifying and supporting people at risk of rough sleeping.
• A new £200 million Single Homelessness Accommodation Programme, to deliver up to 2,400 homes and wrap-around support by March 2025. This will provide new supported housing and Housing First accommodation and homes, including for young people at risk of homelessness and rough sleeping. Together with completing delivery of the 6,000 longer-term homes through the Rough Sleeping Accommodation Programme, this programme will provide the breadth of housing-led solutions required to meet the different needs of people experiencing rough sleeping, in areas of highest need.
• A whole system approach that puts the needs of those experiencing rough sleeping at its heart and ensures strong national and, most importantly, local leadership and accountability to deliver rough sleeping outcomes. We will ensure new local Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) take account of the health and social care needs of people sleeping rough in their area. Whilst most people sleeping rough in England on a single night in autumn 2021 were from the UK, we will exhaust all options within the law to support people experiencing rough sleeping who are non-UK nationals, including those who have restricted eligibility for public funds – supporting them to find a pathway off the streets that is relevant to them. The whole of government is united in ending rough sleeping and we expect local delivery partners to work together to deliver to the same end.

Prevention

12. We will not end rough sleeping if we do not get better at preventing it from happening in the first place. Whilst individual and personal circumstances are complex and often out of government’s control, we are still determined to deliver a new ‘prevention first’ approach that reduces the risk of someone sleeping rough. This strategy, backed by significant multi-year funding, will improve the accessibility of housing, continue and expand flagship initiatives and work across government to support our ambition to make sure that no-one should leave a public institution – whether that is a hospital, prison, care or the asylum system – on to the streets. To achieve our ambitions on prevention:

1) We will increase affordability and security of housing, through our £11.5 billion Affordable Homes Programme, which will provide up to 180,000 new homes across England; and by helping people to stay in their homes and access a fairer Private Rented Sector. We will also strengthen models of jobcentre support and partnerships to ensure that people can get the benefits they are entitled to, for example maintaining the shared accommodation rate exemption for people who have spent time living in a homeless hostel. These measures, alongside the significant support we have already put in place to help people with the cost of living, will help provide housing to those who need it, and provide tenants with more stability, including those that may otherwise be on a path to rough sleeping.

2) We will empower local authorities to better prevent rough sleeping – including fully embedding the landmark Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 (HRA). This is backed by £316 million through the Homelessness Prevention Grant (HPG) in 2022/23 to help local authorities support people before they become homeless. We are consulting on reforms to the HPG to better incentivise local authorities to invest in prevention in the long-term and will announce the outcomes and funding allocations later this year. This will make sure that people at risk of homelessness, including rough sleeping, will continue to be able to access help available from councils.

3) We will commit to working with stakeholders from local authorities and the service delivery sector to establish an operational risk assessment tool to assist with the prevention of rough sleeping, to better support local authorities and partners to identify people at risk of rough sleeping and help target support where needed.

4) We will support our ambition that no-one is released from a public institution to the streets through the following commitments:

4.1) No-one should leave prison homeless or to sleep rough: We are rolling out transitional accommodation nationally so that every prisoner at risk of homelessness has support after release, as part of £550 million to support prisoner rehabilitation and access to accommodation. We will provide new funding over the next 3 years to expand the Accommodation for Ex-Offenders programme so that people at risk of homelessness, including rough sleeping, in all parts of England are supported into long-term, settled accommodation. We will also: continue expansion for Approved Premises for high risk offenders; introduce legislation to reduce numbers of prisoners released on Fridays to help with better access to essential services; introduce resettlement passports, to bring together key information and services to support successful resettlement into the community; and will more than double the number of housing specialists in prisons so people at risk of homelessness, including rough sleeping, get better help planning for their release across every region of England and Wales. This will result in more accommodation and support available in more places, to support more ex-offenders on release from prison – helping to reduce the risk of someone sleeping rough and re-offending; and supporting our mission to level up services across the country.

4.2) Young people leaving care will receive the support they need to secure and maintain suitable accommodation: £3.2 million funding in 2022/23 will provide targeted support to young people leaving care most at risk of homelessness, including rough sleeping, in 69 local authorities identified as having the greatest concentration of young people at risk. It will also provide on-going support for children’s services and housing teams to improve partnership working. We will continue investment into our ‘Staying Put’ programme and scale up the number of local areas offering our ‘Staying Close’ programme, which enable young people leaving care to stay with, or in touch with, former foster families and children’s homes for longer – building their resilience as they transition to independent living. These commitments will ensure that there is more funding available for personal and practical support to aid that transition.

We are grateful to Josh MacAlister and his team for the comprehensive ‘Independent Review of Children’s Social Care’ and, as part of this work, the government will consider the specific recommendations on Mission 4, to “reduce care leaver homelessness now, before ending it entirely” – and will be publishing an implementation strategy before the end of 2022.

4.3) No-one should be discharged from hospital to the streets: We will build on the success of the Out of Hospital Care Programme, by sharing the evaluation of the project and supporting local areas to adopt similar models.

4.4) No-one who has served in the UK Armed Forces should face the need to sleep rough: For Service leavers and veterans, we will maintain high priority for social housing, waivers for local connection and specialist housing support for Armed Forces personnel during their Service, through an improved Joint Service Housing Advice Office and life skills advice, information and guidance. We will continue to embed the Homelessness Reduction Act’s Duty to Refer, which provides the framework for joining up Armed Forces discharge services with local authority services so that Service leavers and veterans at risk of homelessness, including rough sleeping, receive early and consistent support from local authority homelessness services.

4.5) We will review the impact of the new asylum dispersal system on homelessness and rough sleeping: Building on the Home Office’s informal consultation on the implementation of full dispersal and the commitment within the consultation to understand the impacts of full dispersal on homelessness and rough sleeping, we will work collaboratively with local authorities to consider further measures to ensure the dispersal system is equitable, sustainable, and seeks to reduce the risk that people leave asylum support to the streets.

Intervention

13. We know the longer a person stays on the street, the more difficult it becomes to rebuild a life off it. Where it has not been possible to prevent someone from sleeping rough, we need quick and targeted help to get them back on track. Our aim is that everyone sleeping rough should have an appropriate offer of support tailored to their needs and the services for which they are eligible. That is why we are extending our investment in the Rough Sleeping Initiative (RSI), which funds local areas to provide quick, targeted support for people who experience rough sleeping. This funding is vital, but it must sit alongside strengthened partnerships between local agencies and the voluntary sector to address people’s different needs. We must build on the important gains we made through the pandemic, supporting the faith, community and voluntary sectors to work in partnership with local authorities to target people that are least likely to access commissioned or mainstream rough sleeping services. We will also encourage and enable faith and community groups to support people in accommodation and help prevent rough sleeping or a return to rough sleeping. We will ensure agencies are exhausting all options in supporting people who are not from the UK sleeping rough and who, as a result of their immigration status, may have restricted eligibility for public funds. We will support those with restricted eligibility to resolve their immigration status so they can get their life back on track, to secure a job, or to return to their home country where appropriate. Those here illegally will be supported to return to their home country. To deliver the tailored interventions that are needed to end rough sleeping:

1) We will extend investment into co-ordinated local rough sleeping services and ensure tailored support to meet individual needs, including through the flagship £500 million Rough Sleeping Initiative 2022-25 and the £10 million Night Shelter Transformation Fund to increase provision of quality single-room provision within the night shelter sector: These measures will provide effective, tailored interventions to people on the streets based on individual needs and characteristics, including bespoke support for people that experience long-term and cyclical rough sleeping (also known to local authorities as the Target Priority Group/Target Thousand in London); and will make sure that people’s needs are at the heart of our services, including through updated guidance (by National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE)). We will invest in our faith, community and non-commissioned services, helping them to provide quality accommodation and work in partnership with local authorities, making sure people accessing services do not return to the streets. These measures mean that every eligible person sleeping rough should receive a tailored offer of support.

2) We will build on our ‘exhaust all options’ approach with non-UK nationals sleeping rough to make sure those who have restricted eligibility for public funds have a clear pathway off the streets: We will build on the success of our case escalation route to deliver a reformed Rough Sleeping Support Service that will enable the immigration status of individuals with an outstanding application to be swiftly resolved and clarify the status of individuals so that appropriate support is offered – this includes moving the service out of Home Office Immigration Enforcement to improve engagement and active use of the service.

We will also look at what more we can do to improve engagement and build on the existing Home Office support for those who wish to return to their home country voluntarily.

3) We will provide local authorities, police and other agencies with the tools they need to work effectively together to address rough sleeping, protect the public and make communities feel safe for all. Some instances of rough sleeping – along with street activity such as begging or drinking and drug-use which is sometimes, but by no means always, associated with it – can cause legitimate public concern about safety and the impact on local communities, alongside concern for the welfare of those involved. The police and other partners are responsible for community safety and tackling crime that may be perpetrated either by or against individuals rough sleeping and - in partnership with local authorities - they play an important role in responding to these concerns. We will support better multi-agency working between local authorities, the police and other enforcement agencies through guidance and sharing of best practice to respond to these concerns and encourage vulnerable people to engage with support.

Where activity puts individuals involved at risk or makes the public or public realm feel unsafe, it is vital that the local authorities, police and other agencies are able to intervene. Whilst we have taken the significant step of committing to repeal the Vagrancy Act in full, we must make sure the police, local authorities and other agencies have the powers and tools available to respond effectively to begging, support vulnerable individuals and help communities feel safer.

4) We will make it easier for the public to play their part in supporting people sleeping rough through continued funding to improve the StreetLink service that alerts local outreach teams to someone that the public has reported as sleeping rough. The rail sector is leading by example to address rough sleeping on rail, through promoting StreetLink, conducting outreach, developing employment skills and exploring data-linking and stronger partnership working with local authorities. We are grateful for these efforts and encourage sharing this best practice.

Recovery

14. We know that an initial intervention to help someone off the streets won’t always be enough. People need stable, safe and supportive accommodation they can call home, physical and mental health treatment where needed, and viable routes into employment to sustain a life off the streets for good. Most people experiencing rough sleeping have at least some prior experiences of employment. For many, with the right support, work can be a key part of their route out of rough sleeping.

We, therefore, want local agencies to work together so that every person sleeping rough receives the support they need to recover and move away from the streets long-term, helping them back into a stable home, and into work or training if they can.

15. When it comes to accommodation, housing- led interventions are the foundation of a secure and sustainable life away from the streets. However, the needs of people who are sleeping rough are diverse, and their support and accommodation options must be tailored to those needs, as people progress on their journey of recovery from sleeping rough. Local authorities and their sector partners, in collaboration with their residents, are in the best place to commission the right type of accommodation to meet local needs; and because of that the government supports a wide range of housing interventions across our funding programmes, including a strong focus on housing-led solutions.

16. We have already made historic investments in increased supply of move-on accommodation, as well as investing significant levels of funding in treatment and wrap-around support for other needs, such as drug and alcohol dependence – and, as part of this strategy, we will build on these programmes to aid long-term recovery away from the streets. To achieve our ambitions on recovery:

1) We will support both housing-led approaches and Housing First, and make sure specialist homes are in place for those experiencing rough sleeping. We will: complete delivery of 6,000 new move- on homes under the £433 million Rough Sleeping Accommodation Programme; complete the Housing First pilots in 3 mayoral areas; support housing-led and Housing First approaches through the Rough Sleeping Initiative; and increase our support of social investment through our £15 million funding for the Big Society Capital social investment pilots, which has already surpassed its delivery target of over 200 homes. Alongside this, we will be working with Homeless Link to explore the feasibility of a Fidelity Framework to support both existing and future schemes on upholding the 7 principles of Housing First and drive a consistent approach across the sector. These measures will mean increased access to more suitable homes allowing someone experiencing rough sleeping to address their needs, recover and play a more active role in their community.

2) We will address unacceptable poor quality supported housing and increase supply, including through a new £200 million Single Homelessness Accommodation Programme (SHAP), which will focus on the provision of longer-term supported housing alongside Housing First homes. In addition, the £300 million Housing Transformation Fund will support local authorities to boost the supply of long-term supported housing options. It will support local authorities to assess local need for long-term supported housing, including the needs of those at risk of rough sleeping, and to develop long-term supported housing strategies to meet those needs. We will also introduce minimum standards for support, alongside new powers for local authorities to better manage their local supported housing market and ensure rogue landlords cannot exploit the system. The £20 million Supported Housing Improvement Programme will support local authorities, in some of the worst affected areas of the country, crack down on rogue landlords and ensure supported housing is providing adequate, tailored support and good-quality accommodation for its residents. People sleeping rough and moving into supported housing should therefore experience improved quality and increased supply.

3) We will improve the support available to help people with experience of rough sleeping into employment, refreshing the jobcentre offer through best practice and networks of homelessness leads and setting up a covenant with employers to support job opportunities. Our designated homelessness leads will work in jobcentres to offer tailored support to enable people who have slept rough to access skills and employment support. We will also bring businesses into our mission by launching a new employer covenant.

4) We will provide significant investment into drug and alcohol treatment to support people experiencing rough sleeping and improve mental health provision: through an additional investment of up to £186.5 million to expand the Rough Sleeping Drug and Alcohol Treatment Grant, which is delivering structured treatment and wrap-around support for people with drug and alcohol dependence, including people with co-occurring mental health needs. This supports the additional £900 million investment attached to the cross-government Drug Strategy that includes £53 million to provide a range of housing support options to help people who are going through treatment to access suitable and stable accommodation in order to improve the success of treatment and recovery. We are continuing to invest in specialist rough sleeping mental health services through the NHS Long-Term Plan and beyond (£9 million annually from 2024/25); and are ensuring the needs of people who sleep rough are considered in the final Mental Health and Wellbeing Plan – being ambitious in the potential solutions to improve mental health and wellbeing and reduce the number of people rough sleeping because of, or with, mental ill-health.

A more transparent, joined-up system

17. Delivering the step change that is required to end rough sleeping is reliant on a system that is working effectively together, backed by the right data and with clear lines of accountability, including the role of Mayors and other local leaders in delivering rough sleeping outcomes. Delivering a world- leading response to rough sleeping means using the best data and evidence to drive improvements and innovate, including making sure that services are informed by people with lived experience.

18. We have made significant progress already in supporting the long-term system change needed and we are grateful to the remarkable work and dedication by local authorities to collect, collate and share information on rough sleeping. The Homelessness Reduction Act has meant that more people are getting help sooner and there are excellent examples of effective collaboration between agencies up and down the country. We need to build on this with better quality data about rough sleeping in an area, so that effective action can be taken by local partners to end it.

19. We also need to make sure everyone involved in ending rough sleeping is playing their part and working together effectively. This is a strategy for the whole of government and we want to see a whole- system approach locally, building on the excellent partnership working during the pandemic. We will put in place a national data-led framework that supports effective joint working and improved accountability locally; but we recognise there is no one- size fits all approach and want local areas to put in place the structures within this framework that work best for them to end rough sleeping in their areas.

20. Our aim is to support local partners to have the right data and evidence, clear accountability structures, a capable workforce who feel valued, and effective partnerships and services to end rough sleeping for good. To achieve our ambitions for a joined-up system:

1) We will introduce a new national data-led framework to measure progress towards ending rough sleeping, so that every area understands what is needed to end rough sleeping, track the progress they are making, and be held accountable locally. We will publish quarterly data on rough sleeping to support this. We want rough sleeping to be prevented wherever possible, and where it does happen for it to be rare, brief and non-recurrent. The framework developed in collaboration with the Centre for Homelessness Impact sets out the metrics that should be used to measure progress in achieving this. We review our data collection every 6 months as part of our efforts to streamline requirements for local authorities, and to make sure the data is aligned with our long-term approach.

As this work progresses, we will review our data collection in line with the data-led framework.

2) We will ensure robust but flexible accountability structures are in place: having the right data in place is essential, but without clear and robust accountability mechanisms and local leadership, we will not see the systematic change we know we need to end rough sleeping. Our vision includes: at a local level, local authorities, in collaboration with local partners, to take the lead in accountability for local rough sleeping outcomes; and at a national level, central government continuing to set expectations for what we are collectively trying to achieve (including clear commitments from across government departments) and supporting all partners locally to deliver.

3) We will improve our evidence-base and understanding of what works to end rough sleeping, therefore driving value for money and a more innovative approach, through a £2.2 million systems wide research programme (subject to feasibility), which will include an evaluation of the effectiveness of rough sleeping interventions. We will also launch a £12 million Test and Learn Programme, which will trial and evaluate interventions in local areas to develop and share the best examples of what works. Improving our evidence-base includes embedding the voices of people with lived experiences into our policy making, which we will achieve through a new advisory group made up of people with lived experience, who will provide regular advice on our programme of work.

4) We will support the voluntary, community and faith sectors to play their part alongside other delivery partners: Our £7.3 million Voluntary, Community and Frontline Sector Grant Programme will enable stronger strategic partnerships between statutory, commissioned and non-commissioned services and increase the capacity and capability of the sector, through training and investment in the workforce.

5) We will improve how different services work together for people sleeping rough, particularly people facing multiple disadvantage, including supporting partners within the new Integrated Care Systems to develop joined-up local strategies that bring together housing, homelessness and healthcare. This will be supported by new statutory guidance on the Duty to Cooperate for NHS bodies and local authorities – which will highlight the needs of those who sleep rough and be explicit in how partners should work together to address them. We will deliver 15 local pilots through the £64 million Changing Futures programme to test new ways of bringing public and community sector partners together to help people change their lives for the better. As a result, a person sleeping rough should be offered help and support that addresses a range of their needs, including housing, health and care.

Next steps

21. The comprehensive action set out in this strategy will build on progress to date and set in train the change needed across central government and local partners to deliver an end to rough sleeping by the end of the Parliament. It will mean more effective support to prevent rough sleeping in the first place, and a tailored offer of support where it does happen so people can build an independent life off the streets. This will support our objective that no one should have to sleep rough.

22. We want our ambitious approach to be matched by bold local delivery and accountability and expect all those involved in ending rough sleeping to play their part. We want to ensure rough sleeping is ended in a way that is sustainable in the long-term, and this strategy lays the foundations for the long-term system change needed to support that. We will ask the Rough Sleeping Advisory Panel to provide an annual update on delivery progress to government to track progress in achieving our vision.

Outcome: Prevention

Commitment

1. We will increase affordability and security of housing

2. We will empower local authorities to better prevent rough sleeping – including fully embedding the landmark Homelessness Reduction Act 2017

3. We will commit to working with stakeholders from local authorities and the service delivery sector to establish an operational risk assessment tool to assist with prevention of rough sleeping

4. We will support our ambition that no-one is released from a public institution to the streets through the following commitments:

4.1 No-one should leave prison homeless or to sleep rough

4.2 Young people leaving care will receive the support they need to secure and maintain suitable accommodation

4.3 No-one should be discharged from hospital to the streets

4.4 No-one who has served in the UK Armed Forces should face the need to sleep rough

4.5 We will review the impact of the new asylum dispersal system on homelessness and rough sleeping

5. We will support recovery to prevent rough sleeping recurring

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Outcome: Intervention

Commitment

1. We will extend investment into co-ordinated local rough sleeping services and ensure tailored support to meet individual needs, including through the £500 million Rough Sleeping Initiative 2022-25 and the £10 million Night Shelter Transformation Fund to increase provision of quality single-room provision within the night shelter sector

2. We will build on our ‘exhaust all options’ approach with non-UK nationals sleeping rough to make sure those who have restricted eligibility for public funds have a clear pathway off the streets

3. We will provide local authorities, police and other agencies with the tools they need to work effectively together to address rough sleeping, protect the public and make communities feel safe for all

4. We will make it easier for the public to play their part in supporting people sleeping rough

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Outcome: Recovery

Commitment

1. We will support both housing-led approaches and Housing First, and make sure specialist homes are in place for those experiencing rough sleeping

2. We will address unacceptable poor quality supported housing and increase supply, including through a new £200 million Single Homelessness Accommodation Programme

3. We will improve the support available to help people with experience of rough sleeping into employment, refreshing the jobcentre offer through best practice and networks of homelessness leads and setting up a covenant with employers to support job opportunities

4. We will provide significant investment into drug and alcohol treatment to support people experiencing rough sleeping and improve mental health provision

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Outcome: Transparent and joined-up system

Commitment

1. We will introduce a new national data-led framework to measure progress towards ending rough sleeping

2. We will ensure robust but flexible accountability structures are in place

3. We will improve our evidence-base and understanding of what works to end rough sleeping

4. We will support the voluntary, community and faith sector workforce to play their part alongside other delivery partners

5. We will improve how different services work together for people sleeping rough, particularly people facing multiple disadvantage, including supporting partners within the new Integrated Care Systems to develop joined-up local strategies that bring together housing, homelessness and healthcare

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Chapter 1: Progress since 2018

This chapter covers:

• Rough sleeping numbers: trends since 2010 and international comparators
• Our response to Covid-19: successes to build on
• Record of delivery: progress since the 2018 Strategy and work still to do
• Wider challenges: the national and international context

Rough sleeping numbers

1. We have made significant progress since the publication of the 2018 Rough Sleeping Strategy to reduce rough sleeping numbers and change the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in our society. This has been driven and delivered by the hard work and collaboration of local councils, central government, the voluntary, community and faith sectors, and other delivery partners. All those involved continue to work tirelessly to support people away from the streets and onto a path of recovery and independent living – and our data clearly shows these efforts are working.

2. The annual rough sleeping snapshot statistics measure the number of people sleeping rough on a single night in autumn. In 2018, we saw the first reduction in rough sleeping numbers in 8 years falling to 4,677 people from a peak of 4,751 people in 2017. Numbers have continued to fall every year since 2018. The autumn 2020 snapshot coincided with a national lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Everyone In helped to protect thousands of vulnerable people, including those sleeping rough or at risk of sleeping rough. In autumn 2020, there were 2,688 people estimated to be sleeping rough on a single night, which was down by 43% from the peak in 2017.

3. The most recent statistics show that rough sleeping is now at an 8-year low. In autumn 2021, there were 2,440 people estimated to be sleeping rough on a single night down 9% from the previous year (2020) and 49% from the peak in 201714. The autumn 2021 snapshot showed that rough sleeping had decreased in every region of England since 2020. The largest decrease, compared to the same period in 2020, was in Westminster, down c. 23% to 187 people. Manchester saw the second largest decrease in 2021 compared to the previous year, with a decrease of 37% (25 people). In Exeter, the number of people sleeping rough more than halved in 2021 from 2020, with 14 people estimated to be sleeping rough on a single night.

4. The annual rough sleeping statistics are a robust and reliable measure of demonstrating changes in rough sleeping in England over time. However, we also collect more regular management information, which provides a fuller picture of the dynamic and seasonal nature of rough sleeping, but it does not go through the same process of independent verification as the official statistics. Our latest management information shows there were 1,806 people estimated to be sleeping rough on a single night in March 202216. This is an increase of 286 people compared to the same period last year (March 2021), however it remains significantly lower than the autumn 2017 peak measured through the annual rough sleeping snapshot. We recognise that no-one should have to sleep rough, and the progress made in recent years by local authorities and partners shows what can be achieved with our ongoing determination to end rough sleeping.

5. We have seen significant reductions in many areas following the introduction of our flagship Rough Sleeping Initiative, launched in 2018, where 83 local authorities with the highest levels of rough sleeping received funding for services. Since the launch, 24 of the original 83 authorities (referenced below) have had significant reductions in the numbers of people sleeping rough on a single night for two years or more according to the official annual rough sleeping snapshot.

The list below is based on local authorities who have reported ten or less people sleeping rough on a single night for two years or more in the official annual rough sleeping snapshot.

Basildon

Bedford

Buckinghamshire

Cheshire

East Colchester

Haringey

Harlow

Hounslow

Ipswich

Maidstone

North East Lincolnshire

Richmond upon Thames

Salford

Southend-on-Sea

Swindon

Tameside

Tunbridge Wells

Walsall

West Berkshire

Wigan

Wolverhampton

York

Havering

Warwick

Figure 1: Estimated number of people sleeping rough on a single night in autumn in England since 2010

Figure 1: Estimated number of people sleeping rough on a single night in England since 2010. The rough sleeping single night snapshot remains our most reliable method of showing trends in rough sleeping figures in the country and as a way of comparing change over time. The methodology has been in use since 2010 and is collated by outreach workers, local charities and community groups, and is independently verified by Homeless Link alongside hundreds of volunteers from homelessness sector organisations. As the figures collected prior 2010 were collected using a different methodology, figures before 2010 are not directly comparable with consequent snapshot figures.

6. Our levels of rough sleeping also compare well internationally, although it is difficult to draw international comparisons due to a difference in approaches. There were 4 people sleeping rough on a single night in autumn 2021 per 100,000 people in England, compared to 3 people sleeping rough per 100,000 people in South Korea and Japan, which are countries with comparable data collection methodologies and have the lowest rates globally. The USA has 69 people sleeping rough per 100,000. When comparing across Europe, large cities in England, such as London and Manchester, have lower rough sleeping rates than large cities in France (Paris) and Germany (Berlin). For example, in 2021 in the City of Paris, 128 people slept rough per 100,000 people^{[footnote 4]}, and in Berlin, 55 per 100,000^{[footnote 5]} – compared to 13 people sleeping rough per 100,000 in inner London and 8 people sleeping rough per 100,000 in Manchester^{[footnote 6]}.

Our response to COVID-19

7. The success of falling rough sleeping numbers can be attributed, in part, to our pandemic response. At the beginning of the pandemic, the government urgently called on local authorities to bring ‘everyone in’ – and quickly accommodate people currently, or at risk of, sleeping rough, to allow them to self-isolate and be protected from the spread of COVID-19. We know that people experiencing rough sleeping can often have complex health needs and a range of vulnerabilities, which meant it was important to take extra care to keep people safe. Our collective response saved lives.

According to research by University College London and published in the Lancet, preventative measures taken by the government may have avoided 21,092 infections, 266 deaths, 1,164 hospital admissions and 338 intensive care admissions among the homeless population in the first wave of the pandemic alone.

Our clear messaging and collaborative approach galvanised local authorities, health and care and sector partners to protect people sleeping rough from COVID-19.

8. As the pandemic evolved, so did our approach. We were determined that after the initial efforts to bring people in, and as lockdown restrictions eased, people did not return to the streets. In summer 2020, we announced plans to accelerate funding to provide 6,000 homes of long-term supported accommodation to people sleeping rough, alongside a further £91.5 million to provide interim accommodation and support to those housed during the pandemic. This funding sat alongside £112 million for the Rough Sleeping Initiative in 2021/22, which funded local areas to provide coordinated rough sleeping services.

9. To support areas with additional pressures during the winter months and further periods of high infection rates, we provided additional funding and support through the £15 million Protect programme, following the November 2020 and January 2021 national lockdowns. Later, when the Omicron variant threatened the health of those still on the streets, we committed a further £28 million to ‘Protect and Vaccinate’ the rough sleeping population. By December 2021, over 40,000 people had been supported into longer-term accommodation since the start of the pandemic, which included people sleeping rough, at risk of rough sleeping, as well as those who lost their accommodation unexpectedly during the pandemic.

10. Not only did our approach during the pandemic save lives, but it transformed the landscape for rough sleeping services. Local authorities and the voluntary sector have told us that it offered an unprecedented opportunity to engage with people experiencing multiple disadvantage, some of whom had been on the streets for years and had previously refused offers of support. Local areas developed and implemented a strong partnership approach with councils, charities, health partners and others across the sector to respond to the new and emerging challenges. Our pandemic response demonstrated the powerful impact that we can have when central government, local government, and the voluntary and community sectors work together with health and housing partners.

Figure 2: People in emergency and short-term accommodation, June 2020 to March 2022

Figure 2: The number of people estimated to be in emergency and short-term accommodation from June 2020 to March 2022 according to monthly rough sleeping management information collected from local authorities. The peak in June 2020 coincides with the first national lockdown, and since the easing of lockdown restrictions from March 2021, the number of those in emergency accommodation has decreased. The increase again in October 2021 to January 2022 may be linked to colder weather but also to the Protect and Vaccinate Scheme, launched in 2021.

These are not official statistics and do not go through the same level of verification as the annual snapshot statistics.

Record of delivery: The 2018 Strategy

11. The success of our pandemic response was also due to the infrastructure that we had put in place before the pandemic. The 2018 Rough Sleeping Strategy laid the foundation for our vision, setting out the 3 core pillars needed to end rough sleeping – Prevention, Intervention and Recovery. This continues to inform our strategic approach to ending rough sleeping today. Our key achievements since then include:

• The Homelessness Reduction Act (HRA), which came into force in 2018, placing new duties upon local authorities and other public bodies to prevent homelessness, particularly for single people who can be at risk of sleeping rough. Since then, over 500,000 households have had their homelessness successfully prevented or relieved through securing accommodation for more than 6 months.
• The Rough Sleeping Initiative (RSI), launched as part of the 2018 Strategy, continues to provide significant resource for local authorities by providing funding to deliver local, tailored rough sleeping services. It is the foundation on which much of the support for people experiencing rough sleeping rests. Over the years, the government has committed significant levels of funding from £30 million in 2018/19, to £46 million in 2019/20 and £112 million in 2020/21, and an 80% increase to £202 million in 2021/22. For 2022-25, we are providing up to £500 million of multi-year funding to give local authorities across England the resources to continue their success in reducing the number of people sleeping rough and provide people sleeping rough with support to sustain a life off the streets. The published, independently peer reviewed RSI impact evaluation, found that the RSI produced a net reduction of 32% in rough sleeping in 2018 compared to areas with no RSI funding^{[footnote 7]}.
• The Housing First pilot schemes, which launched in May 2018, provide stable, affordable accommodation and intensive wrap-around support to people experiencing entrenched and cyclical rough sleeping and with the most complex needs The Housing First pilots are now in their fifth year and, based on monitoring information provided by the pilots, as of June 2022, they have cumulatively supported over 1,300 people experiencing entrenched and cyclical rough sleeping across 23 local authorities. The pilots are currently supporting over 900 individuals and over 1000 individuals have been provided with accommodation over the pilot’s lifetime^{[footnote 8]}.

12. Alongside this, we have brought forward a number of programmes to fill gaps in provision; tackling substance misuse, providing longer-term accommodation and funding to support specific pathways for people leaving prison or care. Initiatives from the 2018 Strategy have continued to mature over the years and remain core to the foundation of this strategy. We set out more detail in later chapters about progress in delivering this support and how we will build on it going forward.

Work still to do

13. Despite our achievements to date, we need to go further if we are to meet the manifesto commitment to end rough sleeping by the end of this Parliament. We will not level up the country if we do not support the most vulnerable and tackle inequalities, and those experiencing rough sleeping are at the sharp end of deprivation. We estimate that 40% of people sleeping rough are new to the streets each month – so we need a step change in how rough sleeping is prevented, as well as ensuring that we can engage and offer support to those on the streets.

14. We know that the drivers of rough sleeping are often complex and multifaceted, and people have multiple and overlapping needs. There are a number of structural factors that can contribute to someone sleeping on the streets, including the affordability and security of housing. In healthcare, people experiencing rough sleeping can struggle to access the care they need because their circumstances make it difficult for them to engage with the health system. Similarly for non-UK nationals sleeping rough, it is critical that we are being truly exhaustive in the options available to support them, and clearly signposting pathways available to get off the streets.

15. A range of individual factors may also contribute to someone rough sleeping, and these factors can be both a cause and a consequence of sleeping rough. For example, in a sample of those who had experienced rough sleeping (through the Rough Sleeping Questionnaire 2020), at least 43% of respondents self-reported having a mental health need prior to first sleeping rough, and 17% self-reported developing a mental health need after first sleeping rough. Additionally, at least 43% of respondents self-reported developing a drug need prior to sleeping rough, 53% of respondents had been to prison and 26% had been in care as a child32. To end rough sleeping, we need to take action to address this range of factors – and not just action across housing. We need system change, so that everyone involved – central and local government, health partners, enforcement agencies, the criminal justice system, jobcentres, the voluntary sector, employers, the public – works better together to end rough sleeping and has the tools to do so.

Wider challenges

16. We are facing a range of national and global challenges. Whilst for many of us the threat from COVID-19 recedes, many people sleeping rough may still be threatened by the most severe effects, due to poor health and relatively low vaccination rates^{[footnote 9]}. We must make sure we continue to protect those at risk through continued support to get vaccinated, access to testing in homelessness settings, and access to the right healthcare.

17. We understand that households across the UK are struggling to make their incomes stretch to cover the rising cost of living. The government has already taken significant steps to mitigate these pressures, announcing in May 2022 over £15 billion in further support, targeted particularly at those with the greatest need. This package is in addition to the over £22 billion already committed, with government support for the cost of living now totalling over £37 billion this year. The war in Ukraine has also placed further pressure on global supply chains and prices of goods.

18. All of the above means that we will continue to build on the successes of the 2018 Strategy and our world-leading pandemic response. At the same time, we need to take new action to deliver a system-wide approach to tackling rough sleeping and addressing the range of factors that can cause it. The following chapters will set out how we are going to do this.

Chapter 2: Our vision and approach

This chapter provides an overview of our vision and strategic approach to ending rough sleeping, including:

• What does ending rough sleeping mean? Our vision and definition for ending rough sleeping
• How are we going to end rough sleeping? Our approach to prevention, intervention, recovery and a transparent and joined-up system
• Who is going to end rough sleeping? Our roles and responsibilities to deliver a genuine system-wide response
• What happens once we have ended rough sleeping?

Our plan beyond the manifesto commitment to end rough sleeping by 2024

What does ending rough sleeping mean?

1. There is currently no universal definition of what ‘ending rough sleeping’ means in practice. There is general agreement that sustainably achieving ‘absolute zero’ people sleeping on the streets – meaning not a single person in any location around the country – is highly unlikely in practice. This is in recognition of the unexpected life events that can cause people to sleep rough at short notice and that no country in the world has zero people sleeping rough on their streets. Efforts to tackle the issue have often focused almost exclusively on reducing the ‘point-in-time’ count of people seen sleeping out on a given night of the year. While this is vital – and at the heart of our approach is the aim that the number of people seen sleeping rough on a given night should be zero or as close to zero as possible – focusing on just this alone is unlikely to meaningfully ‘end’ rough sleeping for good. It does not, for example, give sufficient emphasis to preventing people from sleeping rough in the first place, or to ensuring that anyone who sleeps rough never experiences it again.

2. This is why, in consultation with experts including the Centre for Homelessness Impact, we have worked to define more clearly what we mean by ending rough sleeping and put in place a framework to measure whether it is being delivered.

The government considers rough sleeping will have ended when every local area ensures rough sleeping is ‘prevented wherever possible and, where it cannot be prevented, it is a rare, brief and non-recurring experience’. In practice this means that we want to see more effective support to prevent rough sleeping from happening in the first place, and a tailored offer of support where it does, so people can build an independent life off the streets. This approach is endorsed by many in the sector, as set out in the Kerslake Commission report^{[footnote 11]} and by Crisis^{[footnote 12]}.

3. Alongside this vision, we need a framework for delivering the definition, so that all partners know what is required to end rough sleeping and can track progress in getting there. We have been working with the Centre for Homelessness Impact and 5 ‘early adopter’ areas to test how this vision can be delivered and the data needed to track it. Further detail on the outcome of this work and the innovative data-led framework that we aim to roll out nationally is set out in the chapter on a ‘Transparent and Joined-up System’. For the first time, this framework will give central government and local partners a shared understanding of what it means to end rough sleeping. It will set out the breadth of metrics that are most important in tracking progress, so that we have a full picture of what is happening in local places, from how well rough sleeping is being prevented, to how effectively people repeatedly sleeping rough are being supported. This will drive performance across local partners by shining a light on progress across a range of measures to help identify where specific action is needed. It will help all those involved to work towards our shared vision that every local area ensures rough sleeping is ‘prevented wherever possible and, where it cannot be prevented, is a rare, brief and non-recurring experience’.

4. Rough sleeping is the most acute and extreme form of homelessness. This government is committed to tackling homelessness in all its forms and we are committed to fully embedding the landmark Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 (HRA), which placed unprecedented duties on local authorities to take steps to help prevent homelessness, including rough sleeping. More detail about our plans to fully embed the HRA are set out in the chapter on ‘Prevention’. Whilst this strategy focuses on the policies and services, we are delivering to address rough sleeping, it includes a broad range of measures that help relieve wider homelessness, particularly by improving the affordability, quality and security of homes.

How are we going to end rough sleeping?

5. To achieve this vision, we have developed a 4-pronged approach to end rough sleeping – this is supported by over £2 billion to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping over the next 3 years.

• better prevention to reduce the number of people that reach the streets in the first place;
• swift and effective intervention for those who do sleep rough;
• additional targeted support for those that need it for their recovery (including specialist accommodation); and
• a more transparent and joined-up system to ensure everyone is working together effectively to end rough sleeping.

6. We know that rough sleeping is not simply a housing issue – which is why this is a whole of government strategy that includes initiatives across health and social care, the criminal justice system, immigration and enforcement, welfare, employment, support for care leavers, alongside housing. We know we need to make sure the whole system is working better to tackle rough sleeping.

7. The policies that underpin our work on prevention, intervention, recovery and system join-up can be found in the chapters below. There is, of course, overlap between these key activities – for example, mental health and substance misuse treatment is a way to prevent rough sleeping (given that over two-fifths of people self-reporting an alcohol, drug or mental health issue, reported having this issue before sleeping rough), but is also essential for recovery – and recovery, in turn, further prevents the risk of returning to the streets in the future.

8. However, ending rough sleeping cannot be neatly packaged into a one-size-fits-all policy proposal. People are complex by nature and our responses need to reflect this. Services and those delivering them continually flex to respond to the changing nature of sleeping rough and the needs in a local area. That is why our initiatives, across prevention, intervention and recovery, put the needs of people experiencing rough sleeping at their heart. Guidelines published in March 2022 by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) – integrated health and social care for people experiencing homelessness’ – set out core principles for how we should all approach care and support for people experiencing homelessness, including rough sleeping.

These guidelines refer to the importance of integration between health and care and housing and are focused on delivering person-centred, empathetic, non-judgemental support and trauma- informed care in psychologically informed environments – recognising that people’s behaviour and engagement with services is influenced by previous traumatic experiences. They highlight the importance of building long-lasting, trusting relationships and recognise that engagement with services may not work first time round – and that active support to help people re-engage with services may be necessary, especially to help those with a long-term history of rough sleeping or experiencing multiple disadvantage. We will strive to embed these principles into everything that we and our partners do.

9. We must also ensure that the lived experiences of people who have slept rough informs the action we take. People with lived experiences play a vital role in raising awareness, sharing first-hand knowledge and feedback on how the system works in practice and helps to bring human perspectives into policy-making; whilst also playing a role in building the confidence and skills of the individuals involved too. Through our engagement on this strategy, we have involved groups that represent people with lived experience and recognise the importance of this as part of our on-going work. To deliver this, we will be developing a new advisory group made up of people with lived experiences who will be in place to provide regular advice and consult on our programme of work (you can find more detail on this on the chapter on ‘Transparent and Joined-up Systems’). With this in place, we hope to improve the design of our services and policies, deliver tangible system change and make sure that people with the experience and expertise have the right platform to share their unique insights and challenges.

Who is going to end rough sleeping?

10. We will only end rough sleeping if those involved work together effectively. We need a holistic approach across the system, with ambitious cross-government action met by ambitious local delivery. Partnership working was critical to the success of our pandemic response and building on this is a key priority throughout this strategy. It is a golden thread through all our policies, putting in place the infrastructure and incentives to embed effective partnership working by default.

11. We all have a role to play in ending rough sleeping and the government must lead from the front in encouraging partnership working – particularly across central government departments. The strategy includes a number of measures to encourage join-up at a: national level, with increased visibility and collaboration of policies that cross departmental boundaries; at a local level, with expectations on partnership working set as part of our funded programmes, such as the Rough Sleeping Initiative; and at a system level, with new commitments as part of implementation of the Integrated Care Systems. Alongside the measures in this strategy, we recognise that the forms of partnership working and the ways of working that underpin that will be different for each local area and that local authorities, with delivery partners, will work together to find the right structures that work best for them.

12. We also expect all partners to acknowledge the role they play in our system approach and be pro-active in their leadership to end rough sleeping, and we have set out this expectation in this strategy. Local authorities must set the ambition locally, such as through their Ending Rough Sleeping plans, while public and delivery bodies must ensure that all parts of the system are geared towards supporting people experiencing rough sleeping when they interact with their services. Housing Associations also have a role to play in accommodating people with experience of rough sleeping and the voluntary, community and faith sectors provide vital support through engaging with those people least likely to access mainstream rough sleeping services.

We have set out how each partner contributes to our shared aim of ending rough sleeping, although this list is, of course, not exhaustive.

Central government including:

• Government departments
• Delivery bodies e.g. prisons and probation, job centres and immigration services

Central government will:

• Set strategic direction
• Develop national policy to end rough sleeping
• Provide funding and ensure accountability
• Develop a national evidence base
• Establish infrastructure to enable delivery

Local government and leadership, including:

• Local authorities
• Mayors

Local government will:

• Provide leadership and aspiration towards ending rough sleeping locally
• Maintain strategic partnerships
• Ensure joined-up funding, commissioning and service planning
• Deliver local services
• Improve data sharing, quality and use

Service level delivery partners, including:

• Service providers, commissioned and non-commissioned
• Public bodies i.e. NHS, police
• Housing associations
• People with lived experience

Delivery partners will:

• Work in partnership to deliver key services to prevent rough sleeping e.g. through housing and health
• Intervene and ensure people can move away from the streets long term
• Provide expert advice on the best way of engaging with people sleeping rough and the use of resources

Individual and organisational contributions, including:

• Members of the public
• Employers
• People with lived experience
• Academies and think tanks

Individuals will:

• Notify local services when they are concerned about an individual sleeping rough, through using Streetlink
• Give time or money to local organisations
• Provide opportunities for people with experience of rough sleeping to gain training or employment
• Contribute their experiences, evidence and views to national policy, where appropriate

13. There are a number of ways in which we are embodying a collaborative approach. We are committed to working closely with delivery partners to implement the strategy, building on the effective working relationships already in place. We listened to the voices of experts across the sector in the development of this strategy. This included a programme of roundtable sessions chaired by senior leaders from across the sector and local government and working closely with the Rough Sleeping Advisory Panel, an expert group made up of leading charities and service delivery organisations from across the sector. This is alongside our regular working groups which inform our approach and support effective policy-making.

14. We are committed to collaborating with the devolved administrations across the United Kingdom to share best practice. Ending rough sleeping cannot be done in isolation of other societal issues and this work is inextricably linked with other government priorities such as tackling drugs, reducing reoffending and supporting children in care.

15. Government must lead by example when it comes to collaborative working – which includes shared accountability for delivery of this strategy and achieving our ultimate ambition to end rough sleeping, which is why we will ask the Rough Sleeping Advisory Panel to provide an annual update on delivery progress to government to track progress in achieving our vision.

What happens once we have ended rough sleeping?

16. We are focused on delivering a system that ends rough sleeping sustainably – preventing rough sleeping wherever possible and where it cannot be prevented, ensuring it is a rare, brief and non-recurring experience. In doing this, we will not only aim to provide pathways to independent lives off the street, but also make sure we are delivering a system where no one has to sleep rough. This strategy covers funding to tackle rough sleeping for the next 3 years (until 2024/25) and our ambition is to make sure that local authorities and partners have the capacity and capabilities in place to lead on-going delivery at a local system level. This strategy lays the foundations for the long-term system change needed to support that. We recognise that this is a complex problem and that the system is maturing all the time, as we work together to overcome barriers and continue to develop new and innovative ways to address homelessness and rough sleeping beyond this strategy.

Chapter 3: Prevention

This chapter provides an overview of our approach to prevention – it includes:

• Case for action: what do we know about the drivers of rough sleeping and how it can be prevented?
• Making a change: what is our ambition for preventing rough sleeping?
• Acting now: what action will we take to achieve our ambition?

Case for action: What do we know?

1. Preventing rough sleeping is at the heart of our strategy, to ensure we are doing all that we can to support individuals before they reach the streets. We estimate around 40% of people sleeping rough are new to the streets each month, so we need to get better at preventing rough sleeping.

2. Unaffordable and insecure accommodation is an important factor to consider in preventing rough sleeping. 26% of respondents to the Rough Sleeping Questionnaire (RSQ) 2020 reported financial reasons for losing their last settled base. Research conducted in 2017 found that only 20% of private landlords were willing to rent to households on Universal Credit, demonstrating the lack of availability for low-income individuals to access accommodation in the Private Rented Sector. Over 70% of social renters are in the bottom two income quintiles, with social housing playing a key role in preventing low-income households from becoming homeless and possibly sleeping rough.

3. However, we also know that the risk of rough sleeping is particularly acute in transitional periods from services or institutions into the community. Understanding the routes into rough sleeping is vital. For example, of the people in emergency and short-term accommodation in March 2022, 5% had previously been discharged from prison. We also know that 11% of respondents of the RSQ 2020 reported being in prison before they slept rough and in 2021/22, 11% of people leaving custody were released from prison to the streets or other forms of homelessness^{[footnote 13]}. 2% of respondents of the RSQ 2020 reported being in hospital before sleeping rough, showing more can be done to avoid discharging people to the streets. Young people leaving care can struggle to access the Private Rented Sector, in some instances because they cannot provide a deposit or are struggling with the transition into adult life, impacting their ability to sustain a tenancy. Research has found that around a third of young people become homeless within two years of leaving care. From this evidence, we know that to prevent rough sleeping we need to support people falling through the gaps when leaving institutions such as prison, hospital, care and asylum support.

4. As well as structural causes, people’s individual circumstances are incredibly important when understanding the causes of rough sleeping – and each person will have a different journey and story to tell. Individual factors such as relationship and family breakdown, mental ill-health and substance misuse, can all be contributing factors. Additionally, we know that Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are a prevalent feature in what becomes the adult experience of repeated trauma and rough sleeping. Research has shown that the most complex forms of multiple exclusion homelessness are associated with childhood trauma, and a systematic review found that ACE was extremely high among adults experiencing homelessness, with over half exposed to four or more early traumatic experiences.

5. Ultimately, the solution to ending rough sleeping must involve preventing people from sleeping rough in the first place and ensuring they can access the right support for their individual circumstances. We need to ensure that we create a system in which homes are affordable and secure and, where people are at risk of rough sleeping, we are able to provide effective support before they reach the streets.

Making a change: What is our ambition?

6. We will prevent rough sleeping wherever possible – ensuring that the experience is rare. This ‘prevention first’ offer builds on what is already working with a new focus on preventing rough sleeping earlier in people’s journey, intervening well before crisis point to help people off a path to rough sleeping across the system.

7. This offer has 3 core components.

First, helping to improve housing affordability and accessibility by maximising affordable housing supply and delivering our landmark reforms for a fairer Private Rented Sector. Second, helping local authorities, in partnership with other agencies, to better prevent rough sleeping by fully embedding the Homelessness Reduction Act, pivoting funding through the Rough Sleeping Initiative to ensure a focus on prevention and working to develop a new assessment framework for those at risk of rough sleeping. Third, providing targeted action for people we know are most at risk of rough sleeping across the system at some of the most challenging transitional points in people’s lives.

Acting now: How will we achieve it?

8. The below policies underpin how we will deliver a ‘prevention first’ approach. Many of the policies listed under the chapter on ‘Recovery’ will also help to prevent rough sleeping.

9. All of these prevention activities will be supported by our renewed focus on improving data and evidence to underpin policy and decision making, further supported by the new shared definition and a data-led framework for tracking progress towards ending rough sleeping.

10. We recognise the important role that early life, formative experiences have to play in contributing to causes of rough sleeping and the impact it has on how someone may engage with services later on in life. We are working to get ahead of the drivers of rough sleeping. One example of this work is our Supporting Families programme, where we are investing £695 million (over 3 years), funding local authorities to work with families with multiple connected problems, such as family breakdown, poor mental health and substance misuse – which are all factors that can overlap with the causes of rough sleeping. The programme aims to help vulnerable families thrive and become resilient, by providing effective support for the whole family to help prevent their problems escalating into crisis. In April 2022 we published an updated Outcomes Framework for the programme which includes ‘secure housing’ as one of 10 headline measures. The framework also reflects the importance of tackling potential causes of rough sleeping, including unemployment, insecure accommodation and unmanageable debt.

11. To achieve our ambition:

1) We will increase affordability and security of housing

a. Increasing the amount of social housing available, including £11.5 billion investment into our Affordable Homes Programme

Provision of more good quality social housing is a priority for this government. We are committed to increasing the amount of social housing available over time, to provide housing to people who need it. Our £11.5 billion Affordable Homes Programme (AHP) aims to provide up to 180,000 new homes across the country, should economic conditions allow. Around half of the delivery of the AHP 2021-26 will be for Social and Affordable Rent – delivering more than double the amount of Social Rent compared to AHP 2016-23, with around 32,000 Social Rent homes due to be delivered. The ambition is to deliver more social and affordable rented housing, including new council housing, and we will review how to support LAs to best achieve this. Increasing the supply of quality social housing will help people secure and maintain a home, therefore reducing the risk of rough sleeping.

b. Delivering a fairer Private Rented Sector

Our ‘A Fairer Private Rented Sector’ White Paper sets out our plan to deliver a more secure and higher quality Private Rented Sector. We will support tenants with the cost of living by ensuring that rent increases are predictable and fair, and take steps to end discrimination against tenants who claim benefits by a minority of landlords. We will introduce more stable tenancies by abolishing so-called no fault Section 21 evictions, while reforming grounds for possession to ensure landlords continue to have confidence that they can regain possession when necessary. The White Paper sets out to fulfil government’s pledge to level up the quality of housing in all parts of the country, so that everyone can live somewhere which is decent, safe and secure, supporting our aim to end rough sleeping.

c. Maintaining financial support towards housing costs for those on low income through Housing Benefit and Universal Credit

We continue to deliver a welfare system that supports people on low incomes and the most vulnerable in our society, including people who could be at risk of rough sleeping. On top of the existing support available through the welfare system (which includes an extra £1,000 a year for 1.7m families through our cut to the Universal Credit taper and increase to work allowances), to help with the immediate pressures caused by the cost of living, the government is providing £37 billion of payments to low-income households in 2022/23. This is in addition to the Household Support Fund to help with the cost of essentials such as food, clothing and utilities (over £1 billion funding from October 2021 to March 2023). Supporting households with their basic costs of living has ensured that they are better able to afford housing costs – keeping people in their homes and reducing the risk of rough sleeping.

• Supporting people who have experienced homelessness including rough sleeping by maintaining the shared accommodation rate exemption

In May 2021, the government increased the access to additional housing support for people who have experienced homelessness. Single, under 35-year-olds that have lived in a homeless hostel for 3 months or more are entitled to a higher-level of housing support (through an extension to an exemption to the shared accommodation rate). This policy change has enabled more people who have had experience of staying in a homeless hostel to continue their journey towards independent living by making longer-term accommodation more affordable. We will continue the exemption to the shared accommodation rate to help people maintain their accommodation through recovery and reduce the risk of rough sleeping recurring.

• Supporting people who need further financial assistance with their housing costs through Discretionary Housing Payments

Beyond the statutory payments of housing cost support, local authorities have tools at their disposal to provide a safety net for those struggling to meet the cost of their accommodation, with £100 million in Discretionary Housing Payment Funding (DHP) available to local authorities in 2022/23. DHPs can be used flexibly by local authorities to support someone in receipt of Universal Credit or Housing Benefit with help to meet additional housing costs, such as making up a shortfall in rent or covering the costs of moving – helping to secure and stabilise an individual’s tenancy and reducing the risk of rough sleeping.

• Strengthening models of jobcentre support and partnerships to ensure people can get the benefits to which they are entitled

Work coaches in jobcentres can play an important role in prevention and response. Their primary purpose is access to benefits and job support – along with signposting to other services. In many high streets and communities, jobcentres are the front door to government and local services.

Work coaches have a unique opportunity to identify and intervene where individuals are at risk of rough sleeping.

People in the most chaotic and challenging circumstances can sometimes be disengaged from all the necessary services – in these cases, welfare is not just key to getting a roof over someone’s head, as it can also be the gateway to wider services dealing with financial, health and housing issues, and to employment support when the time is right (see chapter on Recovery for further detail). This is why signposting is a key element of the support work coaches offer.

DWP will further strengthen its front-line support and partnerships. It will build on its recent work – such as the introduction of a homeless toolkit and designated leads in every jobcentre – to ensure all staff have a good understanding about the barriers people at risk of rough sleeping face, the support and flexibilities at their disposal and the services available locally where they can get the right support. The homelessness lead has a key role to play in upskilling work coaches and other jobcentre colleagues and advising them on individual cases. They are also the single point of contact for local authority homelessness teams to escalate priority cases and ensure that benefits are paid as swiftly as possible (for instance utilising day-one Universal Credit advances). The homelessness leads will receive refreshed training and share best practice with each other through local and national networks and the homeless toolkit, which will be promoted to all jobcentre and service centre staff.

Engaging with people beyond the bounds of jobcentres can be important for getting people sleeping rough access to benefits. Jobcentre staff, such as the London homelessness adviser team, often provide outreach in community settings where people are more likely to engage – and delivered alongside partners, such as local authority housing teams, to provide joined- up assistance.

As part of this strategy, we will review the jobcentre approach to outreach to ensure people sleeping rough are supported to access benefits. We will spread best practice to ensure this type of offer is available in all areas with high numbers of people sleeping rough and according to local need. Where appropriate, we will ensure that support is targeted at individuals with a long-term history of rough sleeping, who we know can struggle to engage with services without extra help.

2) We will empower local authorities to better prevent rough sleeping – including fully embedding the landmark Homelessness Reduction Act 2017

a. Continuing to support local authorities to embed the Homelessness Reduction Act

The Homelessness Reduction Act (HRA) 2017 is the most ambitious reform to homelessness legislation in decades. The Act was bought in to give local authorities the tools to help vulnerable people earlier and prevent them becoming homeless in the first place. It also puts requirements on different public services, such as jobcentres and prisons, to refer people they think might be at risk of homelessness to their local authority, so that they get the right help as quickly as possible. Since the implementation of the Homelessness Reduction Act, over 500,000 households have had their homelessness successfully prevented or relieved through securing accommodation for at least 6 months; over 740,000 single households (two thirds of the total number of households) and 60,620 households with a reported history of rough sleeping have been assessed as owed help to prevent or relieve their homelessness since the Act was introduced. We have also seen significant success in focusing on prevention through the Duty to Refer which means more people are being referred for the support they need, before they reach crisis point^{[footnote 14]}.

The statutory duties placed upon housing authorities to take steps to prevent and relieve homelessness apply to all those who are eligible, irrespective of whether a person has a ‘priority need’, is regarded as being ‘intentionally homeless’, or if they have a local connection to the area. It is vital that people experiencing rough sleeping continue to receive the statutory support they are entitled to – and maintaining effective join-up between local rough sleeping services, housing authorities and other public services will be key to achieving this. Local authorities have duties to provide emergency accommodation to homeless people who may be vulnerable and have powers to accommodate many of those who are not owed a statutory duty. We will work with local areas to provide at least time-limited off the street accommodation for people sleeping rough in their area, including those who do not have a local connection to that area. We will continue to monitor and support local authorities to fully embed the Homelessness Reduction Act – focusing on findings from our published 2020 review of implementation^{[footnote 15]}, which includes: continuing to work across government to join up local services and support people at risk of homelessness, including rough sleeping, using the Duty to Refer as the framework; providing councils with communications materials to increase public awareness of the prevention duty; and streamlining and continuing to improve the accessibility of our data.

b. Funding £316 million Homelessness Prevention Grant in 2022/23

Between 2017 and 2021, we have invested over £1 billion into the Homelessness Prevention Grant (HPG) and its predecessors (the Flexible Homelessness Support Grant and Homelessness Reduction Grant). As part of this strategy, we are committed to prioritising this significant investment in prevention, which includes a further £316 million through the HPG in 2022/23. This will help local authorities to deliver their homelessness and rough sleeping strategies and meet their duties in the Homelessness Reduction Act. The HPG can be used flexibly to tailor the support to the person in need – this may include financial support for people to find a new home, work with landlords to prevent evictions or to provide temporary accommodation, amongst other preventative measures. This year we are consulting on technical reforms to the HPG to update our data sources and ensure the funding formula best represents current pressures beyond this financial year. These technical reforms will pave the way for greater incentives to invest in prevention and will make sure that people at risk of homelessness, including rough sleeping, will continue to be able to access the help available from councils. We will announce the outcomes and funding allocations later this year.

Prevention is also one of the core objectives of RSI 2022-25 and funding contributes to the cost of liaison and diversion approaches from hospitals and prisons, and work with accommodation providers to reduce short notice eviction through proactive pre-eviction protocols. More on our flagship programme, RSI, can be found in the chapter on ‘Intervention’.

3) We will commit to working with stakeholders from local authorities and the service delivery sector to establish an operational risk assessment tool to assist with the prevention of rough sleeping

While the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 (HRA) has delivered a step change in expanding the support available for single adults, with more people getting help sooner, local authorities and partners could be better supported to identify people most likely to sleep rough and target support where it is needed.

This is why we want a fuller framework that captures the breadth of people that are at risk of sleeping rough. The tool will be developed to include those factors that regularly lead to rough sleeping with the intention of it being made available to local networks to improve the use of the resources they have available to end rough sleeping. This will align with our work on the new data framework which will underpin the definition of rough sleeping and compliment the work on the Homelessness Reduction Act.

4) We will support our ambition that no- one is released from a public institution to the streets through the following commitments:

4.1) No-one should leave prison homeless or to sleep rough

Too many people are currently released from prison homeless. We know we need to take coordinated, multi-agency action at the right stages to reduce the risk of prison leavers sleeping on the streets and make sure pathways of support are in place. That means better support to plan for accommodation options before release, national roll out of transitional accommodation after release, and extra funding to expand support to sustain private tenancies. We will deliver the commitments in The Prisons Strategy White Paper, published in December 2021, and bring forward new funding to expand the Accommodation for Ex-Offenders Scheme to help prison leavers sustain private tenancies in all regions in England:

a. National roll-out of 12-weeks of transitional accommodation upon release

The government has committed to expand the amount of transitional accommodation (Community Accommodation Service – CAS3) for people being released from prison at risk of homelessness, including rough sleeping. This means that people leaving prison can have access to 12-weeks’ accommodation to avoid being released to the streets and, in that time, are supported to find more permanent accommodation. This initiative builds on the success of our pandemic response, where, between May 2020 and May 2021, we supported approximately 5,500 offenders with temporary accommodation, resulting in an almost 30% reduction in people leaving either homeless or to rough sleep (down from 12,090 people in 2019/20 to 7,554 in 2020/21). We know from this experience that accommodation provides a base from which people can engage with local authorities and other support services – providing them with the safety and security they need to engage positively on next steps and rehabilitation into the community. We are now going further by expanding this 12-week transitional accommodation nationally, from the current 5 probation regions to all remaining regions in England and Wales. Delivery is due to start in December 2022/January 2023 and we expect it to support up to 12,000 people per year^{[footnote 16]} over the next 3 years.

As well as CAS3, MoJ will expand its ‘Approved Premises’ estate to support effective rehabilitation of high-risk offenders, providing accommodation support to avoid homelessness and rough sleeping, whilst increasing public safety. The Approved Premises Expansion programme will accommodate 600 additional offenders per-year when fully delivered. To enable prison leavers to access essential services, including preventing homelessness through securing accommodation on release, when parliamentary time allows, we will bring forward legislation to reduce the number of prisoners released on Fridays so people have more time to access this support before the weekend. We will also introduce a resettlement passport, which will bring together key information, including release address and services to support successful resettlement into the community.

b. Employing more Housing Specialists to improve accommodation pathways and partnership with local authorities

Housing specialists are dedicated staff employed in probation regions to improve accommodation outcomes for people leaving prison. They do this by collaborating across prisons, probation and local authorities to improve join-up of local services and accommodation pathways and by providing specialist advice to prison staff on housing options. Building on the 20 Housing Specialists already in post, the Prison White Paper (December 2021) committed to increase the number of Housing Specialists to 48 posts across 12 regions in England and Wales to cover more probation areas. Together with the changes set out above, this will support effective pathways for all prison leavers at risk of homelessness, so that they are identified early and appropriate support is put in place across prison, probation and local authorities to reduce the risk of rough sleeping after release.

c. Taking a preventative approach, based on individual circumstances, through regional probation Homelessness Prevention Teams

Multi-agency working is crucial to providing the right wrap-around support that an individual needs. The government has established Homelessness Prevention Teams across all probation regions, involving a range of local partners including prison, probation and local authorities, to ensure timely and effective referrals to local authorities of people at risk of homelessness (under the statutory Duty to Refer), so that people can receive the appropriate support, at the right time and suited to their needs and risk-level. Our expert homelessness and rough sleeping advisers in DLUHC are committed to working with local authorities to share and encourage this best practice.

d. Targeting welfare support for people preparing to leave prison

Ensuring a smooth transition between prison and independent living is essential to ensure people do not fall through the gaps into rough sleeping. The government already offers support during pre-release with 200 dedicated prison work coaches that work with people in prison to provide information on how to claim Universal Credit on release; this includes a dedicated phone service for those leaving prison that are unable to complete an application online. We also offer support to people serving short-term prison sentences to help maintain their tenancies, so that they still have accommodation to return to upon release – avoiding the risk of rough sleeping. DWP are continuing to strengthen the welfare support and advice offered to people in/leaving prison and are working with MoJ to test different approaches to prisoners preparing to make their Universal Credit claim and claimant commitment before release in 15 prisons with a view to rolling out across the prison estate by 2024. We are committed to continuing to provide this bespoke support to ensure rough sleeping upon release from prison is prevented wherever possible.

e. New multi-year funding to help secure private rented accommodation for people leaving prison

Alongside rolling out transitional accommodation, we will bring forward new funding to support prison leavers to access and sustain private sector tenancies. We have already committed £13 million in 21/22 to help people who have left custody in the last 12 months to secure accommodation in the Private Rented Sector. In July 2021, we launched the Accommodation for Ex-Offenders (AfEO) programme, awarding this funding to 145 local authorities to provide a range of support, such as rental deposits, landlord incentives and dedicated support staff, including landlord liaison and tenancy support/sustainment officers. The programme is designed to align with the transitional accommodation (Community Accommodation Service – CAS3 mentioned above) to ensure there is a robust local pathway in place for people leaving prison. We are committed to continuing this support to those who need it by extending this funding to high need areas in all regions in England, investing additional funding over the next 3 years, allowing more people to be helped into settled accommodation and further prevent the risk of rough sleeping.

4.2) Young people leaving care will receive the support they need to secure and maintain suitable accommodation

While many young people leaving care transition well to independent living, we know there can be challenges for some in accessing appropriate housing and support. Since 2018, the Care Leaver Covenant, has been in place to support care leavers to improve their transition from care to adulthood. The principle behind the Care Leaver Covenant is to encourage organisations across wider society – private, voluntary and public sector – to sign and make a commitment to offer employment opportunities, services, and tailored support to young people leaving care. Support networks, employment and affordable housing are all key to preventing rough sleeping. In line with this pledge, we will continue what we know makes the biggest difference to improving housing outcomes for this group: dedicated personal adviser support for those most at risk, alongside continued support to remain with foster families and support for those leaving children’s homes, and measures to improve joint working between local authority children’s services and housing teams, including through strong corporate parenting governance. This will support our ambition that no-one should leave care to the streets.

a. £3.2 million investment for more specialist personal advisers in 2022/23, to provide individual support for young people leaving care at risk of homelessness, including rough sleeping

The government will expand the number of local authorities with funding for specialist advisers from 56 to 69, with £3.2 million investment in 2022/23. These specialist advisers play a critical role in improving outcomes for young people leaving care, by ensuring that individuals with the highest need have the right support; and by collaborating across local authority housing and children’s services to deliver a joined-up approach to support and accommodation pathways. In 2022/23, specialist advisers will support joined-up, person-centred support to young people leaving care – including:

i. delivering up-to-date joint housing protocols with DfE, between local authorities and children’s services to agree joint-ways of working to deliver wrap-around support and embed collaboration and partnership across services,

ii. ensuring local areas have effective multi- agency arrangements in place for managing complex cases and arrangements in place to support young people placed out of area,

iii. continuing to have regular and meaningful consultation with young people leaving care on their housing options; and

iv. improving systems for data collection to ensure local areas can monitor outcomes and progress for the people they are supporting.

b. £99.8 million funding over the next 3 years into ‘Staying Put’, to enable young people to remain with their former foster families for longer

Our young people need to feel safe, secure and supported when transitioning from care into independent living. This has long been a priority for this government and since 2014 local authorities have been under a legal duty to provide financial support to enable young people in foster care to remain living with their foster family up to the age of 21 if both parties want the arrangement to continue. So far, the government has provided £174 million of funding to support local implementation of ‘Staying Put’ and in 2021, 60% of eligible young people leaving care chose to ‘Stay Put’ at age 18 and 30% of 19–20-year-olds were still living with their former foster carers. We know that young people leaving care benefit from a stable and secure family setting and preparing for independence at a more gradual pace – for example, those who ‘Stay Put’ are twice as likely as others leaving care to go to university and half as likely to be NEET (not in Education, Employment, or Training). Given these outcomes, the government is committed to continuing to invest in ‘Staying Put’, by funding £99.8 million over the next 3 years.

c. £36 million funding over the next 3 years to expand ‘Staying Close’, providing extra support for young people leaving children’s homes

For our young people moving on from children’s homes, we are committed to provide support to access suitable accommodation and guidance to smooth the transition into independence. The ‘Staying Close’ initiative aims to facilitate this, and we have invested over £8.2 million in 8 pilot areas over the last 4 years to help provide offers of move-on accommodation, alongside support from a trusted adult. Independent evaluations and internal monitoring have found that ‘Staying Close’ helps to provide a smoother transition into adulthood and shows positive impacts on individual’s wellbeing, accommodation stability and engagement in education, employment and training. We are committed to continuing this extra support for our young people leaving care to help protect against the risk of rough sleeping. We are investing a further £36 million over the next 3 years, with a view to significantly increase the number of local areas offering the ‘Staying Close’ programme in the future.

d. Working with local authorities to share best practice on supporting young people leaving care at risk of rough sleeping

No-one knows how to better support their young people than local areas themselves – which is why we encourage and share good practice amongst local authorities through DLUHC’s specialist homelessness and rough sleeping advisers. In collaboration with DfE, DLUHC expert advisers will continue to work across children’s and housing services; recommending the Joint Housing Protocol Good Practice Guide and sharing learning from our programmes so far, including promoting the statutory ‘Duty to Refer’.

e. Consideration of the recommendations in the report published by ‘Independent Review of Children’s Social Care’, as part of the government’s broader response to challenges in the care system

We support the mission in the independent review led by Josh MacAlister to “reduce care leaver homelessness now, before ending it entirely”. DLUHC and DfE will collaborate closely on government’s response to the report, carefully considering the recommendations to prevent young people facing homelessness and rough sleeping upon leaving care.

f. Targeting welfare support for young people leaving care

In June 2021, the government increased the age-threshold for someone who has previously been in care to claim a higher-level of housing support. The age limit for the exemption to the shared accommodation rate was raised from 22 to 25 years’ old – meaning that young people who have left care have time to establish links, build support networks, and find work to live independently. Jobcentres also collaborate closely with local authorities to ensure that people leaving care can prepare to claim for Universal Credit payments in advance, to ensure a smoother transition between services. DWP is committed to continuing to provide this bespoke support to ensure rough sleeping amongst our young people leaving care is prevented wherever possible.

4.3) No-one should be discharged from hospital to the streets

a. Adopting learning from the Out of Hospital Care Programme to reduce the risk of people leaving hospital for the streets

The prospect of having nowhere to go following a stay in hospital is something that no-one should be faced with. Over 20/21 and 21/22, the government provided a total of £15.85 million to 17 sites to pilot Out of Hospital Care Models (OOHCM), supporting people at risk of homelessness to recover their health and wellbeing after a stay in hospital and avoid ending up on the street. These models ensure continuity of care when people leave hospital through interim accommodation and care and support while full assessments of individual needs are carried out. A robust academic evaluation of the project will take place in August 2023. We will share this evaluation and learning from the project to encourage local areas to adopt similar models. For example, this could include webinars and engagement events with key organisations and bodies, such as NHS England, local system leaders, academic institutions, Local Authorities, and voluntary, community and faith groups.

The Rough Sleeping Strategy 2018 encouraged more targeted homelessness prevention work across the NHS. We want to ensure people working in hospitals and primary care have the right skills and understand the importance of a person’s housing status when leaving a service. Discharge to Assess is an existing nationally- supported good practice framework, aimed at supporting staff to assess an individual’s long- term care and support needs in an appropriate setting when being discharged from hospital.

OOHCM harnessed the principles of the Discharge to Assess, to meet the needs of those who might otherwise return to the streets or inappropriate accommodation when leaving hospital. We have previously published guidance, including practical tips and case studies, on implementing the discharge to assess, and we continue to recommend this approach to ensure everyone, including those with a history of sleeping rough, can receive the care and support they need when leaving hospital settings.

4.4) No-one who has served in the uk Armed Forces should have to sleep rough

As part of the Veteran’s Strategy Action Plan 2022-24, this government has committed to end veteran rough sleeping by the end of this Parliament. Although there can be a public perception that there are high numbers of veterans sleeping rough, our data suggests that levels are low. The Rough Sleeping Questionnaire 2020, which surveyed people who had slept rough in the previous year found that 6% of UK national respondents had served in the Armed Forces62 and CHAIN statistics in 2021/22 found that 2% of UK nationals sleeping rough had experience of the Armed Forces^{[footnote 17]}.

However, we recognise that veterans can struggle to access mainstream services and benefit from tailored options when they find themselves in housing difficulty. We have already taken steps to provide a comprehensive response to supporting veterans at this important stage in their lives – including the £17.8 million provided for Op COURAGE, a preventative programme supporting veterans mental health and addiction services. In this strategy we will go further: by promoting housing advice much earlier in service and on-going throughout Service personnel’s careers; by introducing ‘Life Skills’ entry-level advice, information and guidance available to all Service Personnel and their families; and by improving collaboration and cohesion between services through the statutory Duty to Refer.

a. Providing high priority access for social housing and temporary accommodation

Supporting our veterans has long been a priority for this government. In 2012, the law was changed so that seriously injured, ill or disabled Service personnel and veterans with urgent housing needs are given high priority access for social housing. This priority access also applies in homelessness legislation – if a veteran is homeless and vulnerable as a result of their service, local authorities have a legal duty to provide temporary accommodation until suitable settled accommodation can be secured. Our veterans have played a vital role in keeping our country safe and we are committed to continuing to provide the support they need to adjust successfully back into civilian life and find a safe and secure place to live when leaving the Armed Forces. DLUHC, working with the OVA and MoD will ensure that there is a good understanding of the Duty to Refer in practice, to ensure that there is better, timely and planned support for those being discharged from the forces.

b. Continuing to waive local connection requirements for veterans

As per the 2008 amendment to the Housing Act (1996), members of the Armed Forces can apply to a local authority for housing support based on a local connection to an area through residence or employment in the same way as a civilian. Additionally, the Allocation of Housing Regulations 2012^{[footnote 18]} set out that, for the purpose of social housing allocations, councils cannot apply a ‘local connection’ test to former and existing Reservists suffering from serious injury, illness or disability wholly or partly attributable to their service and those who are currently serving in the Regular Armed Forces or who were serving at any time in the 5 years preceding their application for an allocation of social housing. These provisions, which can extend to bereaved spouses and civil partners of Service personnel, recognise the special position of members of the Armed Forces whose employment requires them to be mobile and who are likely, therefore, to be particularly disadvantaged by local connection requirements. Statutory guidance for local authorities which set out these provisions was published in 2020, in line with the Armed Forces Covenant.

c. Providing specialist housing support for those leaving the Armed Forces

Following the ‘Our Veterans Action plan launched in 2018’, a review was undertaken into how housing advice is provided to Service personnel and veterans. Following this review, the government committed to providing more holistic, tailored advice and support by moving the Joint Service Housing Advice Office within Defence Transition Services. This is due to conclude in Autumn 2022 and will result in more coherent support and advice for Service personnel and their families who may face challenges with housing and adjustment to civilian life when leaving the Armed Forces.

As well as this support, veterans have access to the Veterans Gateway, an online web and telephone resource, which provides support from a housing specialist who has up-to-date information on available accommodation across the country specifically ringfenced for veterans. They will also have access to a series of ‘life skills’ advice, information and guidance, to be piloted by MoD by the end of 2022 – aimed at Service personnel and their families to improve their understanding of housing options both during and after service. The existing resources, alongside the additional ‘life skills’ support will allow individuals and their families to make the necessary plans while still serving to prevent the risk of rough sleeping.

d. Targeting welfare support for veterans

We are proud to continue to provide vital and significant support services for veterans through our jobcentre network, which recognises the particular needs and circumstances of someone leaving the Armed Forces. Where veterans need extra support, DWP will continue to offer advice from Armed Forces Champions (AFC), who are there to provide personalised support on individual cases where necessary. DWP currently has 50 AFCs deployed across jobcentres (at least one in each Jobcentre Plus district) overseen by 11 regional AFC leads. All work coaches are also able to provide tailored support to members of the Armed Forces community, working alongside the AFCs; and in 2021, we introduced an identifier on the Universal Credit system that helps us to signpost veterans for further support, including for housing.

4.5) We will review the impact of the new asylum dispersal system on homelessness and rough sleeping

a. Consulting local authorities on the long- term reform of the asylum dispersal system

Whilst it is vitally important that we provide interventions to support people who are not from the UK currently experiencing rough sleeping, it is most important that we prevent people finding themselves on the streets in the first place. This is particularly acute when considering people leaving the asylum estate – whether that is because someone has been granted asylum but lacks access to secure and sustainable employment and accommodation; or someone has not been granted asylum with restricted eligibility for local authority support. To better understand these issues, the Home Office has run an informal consultation with local authorities and other interested partners on the implementation of a fairer distribution of asylum seekers across all local authority areas. This is part of our work to explore how asylum dispersal can better take account of the impact on local authorities and inform the design of a more equitable and sustainable system in the long term, including seeking to reduce the risk of people leaving asylum support to the streets.

5) We will support recovery to prevent rough sleeping recurring

There are a number of initiatives in our chapter on Recovery that are also a fundamental part of prevention activity. For example, mental health and substance misuse treatment is both a way to prevent rough sleeping (given that over two fifths of respondents of the Rough Sleeping Questionnaire 2020 first developed an alcohol, drug, or mental health need before sleeping rough), but is also essential for recovery – and recovery, in turn, further prevents the risk of returning to the streets in the future. Our definition of ending rough sleeping is based on ensuring that, if rough sleeping cannot be prevented, the experience is rare, brief and non-recurring. Therefore, any policy that helps address an individual’s needs and supports them off the street into an independent life is ensuring that rough sleeping is prevented in the future and the experience is not a recurrent one.

Case study: Prevention in action

Transitional Accommodation For People Leaving Prison At Risk Of Homelessness, Including Rough Sleeping

Thomas, aged between 45 and 50 years old

I have served sentences on several occasions and usually end up being recalled to prison after a few days due to not having anywhere to live, I would often feel safer in prison. I was overwhelmed with the property provided and the support CAS3 were able to offer. This is the first time I’ve ever been provided with stable accommodation after being released from prison. By having stable accommodation, I’ve been able to focus on moving forward and getting my life back on track. CAS3 has been my second chance and since being accommodated I’ve made excellent progress with substance misuse recovery. Without CAS3, it doesn’t bear thinking about where I’d be – most certainly back in prison or dead! I’m extremely grateful for the support provided and now feel worthy of that second chance. I’m over the moon to be moving onto accommodation with the Council.

George, aged between 25 and 30 years old

This has been brilliant and relaxed for me coming out of prison where I was worried about where I was going for the last at least 1 month of my time in prison. It has given me a nice house to come to, to get my life straight and transition into the community and normal life again. I felt I was so lucky when I walked into the accommodation as it was really nice with all the basic things I needed. Without the worry of accommodation. I have been able to reconnect and build my relationships with my family. Not going backwards to drink and drugs which was something they did not like. I have a job interview and I am working with a support worker who is trying to look for private rent for me. I am calling the council for some help as well I am looking on spareroom.com as the council are going to help me with the start up money for my own place. I feel different, more chilled out I do not want to go back to prison and I want to get on with my life. This has been a saviour for me and I am going to make the best of it.

Brighton And Hove Council – Out Of Hospital Care Best Practice

Brighton and Hove Council, working with their acute, community and mental health trust, introduced an out-of-hospital care model. The model tackles the issue of local health, care and housing ‘systems’ often failing to come together to provide homes, care and support at the right time, to prevent a return to homelessness following a hospital visit, and further health crises. The model includes accommodation of 5 units of 24-hour supported accommodation with clinical in-reach, on site care services and resettlement and reconnection support.

This provision fills a gap in Brighton and Hove’s already well-developed health and care system for people experiencing homelessness, which includes a specialist ‘inclusion health’ GP practice, a community nurse team and a mental health team, and a specialist ‘Pathway’ hospital team. Working with housing and support services, including Brighton’s Street Outreach Service, these services come together to support people to stay healthy and well in the community, and have shown to be effective in reducing discharge to the street, helping to break the cycle of rough sleeping.

Isle of Wight – Housing Personal Adviser

The Isle of Wight Council created a new Specialist Housing Personal Adviser (PA) post based in the council’s Leaving Care service. The Housing PA provides additional support to young people whose accommodation is at risk of breaking down, working with the council’s housing department, accommodation providers and other PAs to broker support via multi agency meetings and to formulate plans to enable the young person to remain in their accommodation.

Since starting the role of Housing PA in 2019 I have been able to focus directly on homelessness and prevention. I have taken a holistic approach not only tackling housing issues directly with our young people, but also strategically, recognising strength within our procedures but also areas for improvement, such as relations with providers.

I organised monthly meetings to offer prevention methods so our young people would not experience homelessness. I ensured that they had the tools to be successful in the placements they already resided in by working with them on their communication and behaviour and mediating with providers. The main purpose of my role has been to provide a rapid and multi-agency approach alongside the PAs to offer our young people the most tailored method possible, exploring all housing options whilst considering the motivation and drive of the individual in order to fulfil their needs. For example, I am currently working on improving communications and relations with prisons so that when care leavers are close to release, there is a plan in place for them to follow. In everything, the young person is the centre of these plans and their involvement and input is vital. I will also be attending the local prison to help officers understand care leavers and the unique challenges they may face.

Everything we do and are striving to do is not possible without the unwavering support of all partner agencies and managers, and of course the amazing young people we work with who have taught me so much and continue to educate me today, and no doubt for the foreseeable future.

Summary of Chapter 3 – Prevention

1. We will increase affordability and security of housing

• Increasing the amount of social housing available, including £11.5 billion investment into our Affordable Homes Programme
• Delivering a fairer Private Rented Sector
• Maintaining financial support towards housing costs for those on low income through Housing Benefit and Universal Credit
  • Supporting people who have experienced homelessness including rough sleeping by maintaining the shared accommodation rate exemption
  • Supporting people who need further financial assistance with their housing costs through Discretionary Housing Payments
  • Strengthening models of jobcentre support and partnerships to ensure people can get the benefits to which they are entitled

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2. We will empower local authorities to better prevent rough sleeping

• Continuing to support local authorities to embed the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 (HRA)
• Funding £316 million Homelessness Prevention Grant in 2022/23

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3. We will commit to working with stakeholders from local authorities and the service delivery sector to establish an operational risk assessment tool to assist with the prevention of rough sleeping

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4. We will support our ambition that no-one is released from a public institution to the streets through:

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4.1 No-one should leave prison homeless or to sleep rough

• National roll-out of 12-weeks of transitional accommodation upon release
• Employing more Housing Specialists to improve accommodation pathways and partnership with local authorities
• Taking a preventative approach, based on individual circumstances, through regional probation Homelessness Prevention Teams
• Targeting welfare support for people preparing to leave prison
• new multi-year funding to help secure private rented accommodation for people leaving prison

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4.2. Young people leaving care will receive the support they need to secure and maintain suitable accommodation

• £3.2 million investment for more specialist personal advisers in 2022/23, to provide individual support for young people leaving care at risk of homelessness or rough sleeping
• £99.8 million funding over the next 3 years into ‘Staying Put’, to enable young people to remain with their former foster families for longer
• £36 million funding over the next 3 years to expand ‘Staying Close’, providing extra support for young people leaving children’s homes
• Working with local authorities to share best practice on supporting young people leaving care at risk of rough sleeping
• Consideration of the recommendations in the report published by ‘Independent Review of Children’s Social Care’, as part of government’s broader response to challenges in the care system
• Targeting welfare support for young people leaving care

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4.3 No-one should be discharged from hospital to the streets

• Adopting learning from the Out of Hospital Care Programme to reduce the risk of people leaving hospital for the streets

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4.4 No-one who has served in the UK Armed Forces should face the need to sleep rough

• Providing high priority access for social housing and temporary accommodation
• Continuing to waive local connection requirements for veterans
• Providing specialist housing support for those leaving the Armed Forces
• Targeting welfare support for veterans

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4.5 We will review the impact of the new asylum dispersal system on homelessness and rough sleeping

• Consulting local authorities on the long-term reform of the asylum dispersal system

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5. We will support recovery to prevent rough sleeping recurring

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Chapter 4: Intervention

This chapter provides an overview of our approach to intervention – it includes:

• Case for action: what do we know about the support needs of people experiencing rough sleeping?
• Making a change: what is our ambition for intervening in rough sleeping to ensure the experience is brief?
• Acting now: what action will we take to achieve our ambition?

Case for action: What do we know?

1. Whilst preventing rough sleeping in the first place is at the heart of our strategy, we also need to ensure there is the right support in place for those that do find themselves rough sleeping where it has not been possible to successfully prevent it. We know that the longer someone sleeps rough the greater the risk that physical and mental health problems will worsen, reinforcing the need for quick and effective intervention. Despite rough sleeping being at an 8-year low, in autumn 2021, there were still 2,440 people estimated to be sleeping rough on a single night in England. Nearly half of all people sleeping rough on a single night in autumn 2021 were in London and the South East, and most were male, aged over 26 years old and from the UK.

2. We know that having a suitable accommodation offer is a vital first step in bringing someone off the streets and helping them access the appropriate support – which was illustrated by the great progress made during the pandemic. During this time, we saw how an increased focus on single-room accommodation was not only successful in preventing the spread of COVID-19, it also provided people with the space, dignity and support they needed to move away from rough sleeping.

For example, evidence has found that the provision of food and quality single-room accommodation enabled other agencies to take their services to individuals, particularly health.

3. However, the causes and solutions to rough sleeping are more than just about housing and there is no national one-size-fits-all approach to supporting an individual off the streets, as this is wholly dependent on the person’s needs and how these needs present in a local area. We need tailored local services so that appropriate offers can be provided to individuals that match their needs. We know that:

a) Multiple Disadvantage: Someone may be experiencing multiple disadvantages from mental ill-health, substance misuse, or having been a victim of domestic violence. For example, for all households owed a Prevention and Relief Duty during 2020/21 with a history of rough sleeping support need, around 61% had a co-occurring mental health support need. This demonstrates the prevalence and overlapping nature of support needs, and reinforces the need for wrap around and holistic support, with tailored interventions that bring together multiple services and systems.

b) Women: In the sample of those who completed the Rough Sleeping Questionnaire (RSQ) 17% of those who had slept rough in the last year were women70, with CHAIN data showing similar levels of women sleeping rough^{[footnote 17]}. However, there is qualitative data which would suggest women’s experiences of homelessness are often ‘hidden’, with women being less likely to bed down on the street and more likely to seek ‘safer’ spaces to spend the night such as on public transport, or engage in sex work. Evidence has also shown that women who experience rough sleeping also experience higher rates of mental ill-health, and these women are also more likely to experience repeat or long-term rough sleeping. Women who sleep rough also tend to make themselves less visible in order to stay safe, by moving at night or concealing themselves or their gender.

This reinforces the need for tailored, specific interventions.

c) Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT): LGBT people become homeless for the same reasons as non-LGBT counterparts, however issues related to sexuality and gender identity often underpin the triggers of homelessness. For example, the family abuse that can trigger homelessness for anyone is usually caused by homophobia, biphobia or transphobia (HBT) for LGBT homeless people. We know that LGBT people who are homeless may be less likely to trust and use statutory services and may face discrimination whilst accessing services

d) Young People: Almost half (48%) of a sample of people who had experienced rough sleeping first slept rough by the age of 25 or under. In the Rough Sleeping Questionnaire (RSQ), 63% of people experiencing rough sleeping who reported mental health support needs first experienced them by the age of 25, as well as those who reported drug (69%) or alcohol misuse (60%) support needs first developing them by the age of 25 or under. It is, therefore, critical that we intervene early and prevent the next generation of people sleeping rough.

e) Non-UK Nationals: We know that those sleeping rough who are not from the UK often have specific support needs and restrictions accessing some support as a result of their immigration status. Although most people sleeping rough in England on a single night in autumn 2021 were from the UK, 25% of those sleeping rough were non-UK nationals with an additional 8% reported as nationality not known. We need tailored interventions for this diverse group so that they can be supported either to get a job when individuals have permission to work, resolve their immigration status, or return to their home country. Those here illegally should be supported to return home.

f) People ‘living on the street’: Whilst there are some people who engage with support easily and early during their experiences sleeping rough, others sleep rough for a longer period of time, and others repeatedly return to the streets. Those who have been on the streets for longer often have complex support needs and may be less willing to engage with support services. Person-centred support and enabling people to choose how and when they engage, has proven to be particularly effective in supporting people into accommodation who otherwise find themselves in long-term and cyclical rough sleeping. CHAIN data for April 2021 – March 2022 showed that 24% of the total of people sleeping rough in 2021/22 were also seen rough sleeping in 2020/21, i.e. they were seen rough sleeping across a minimum of two consecutive years^{[footnote 17]}.

4. Each contact that someone who is experiencing rough sleeping has with any service is a potential opportunity to support them off the streets and connect them to the services that can help meet their needs. What we know about people currently experiencing rough sleeping is that, for effective intervention, we need to tailor the support we provide to individual needs and circumstances, with specialist services providing the right help.

Making a change: What is our ambition?

5. In order to ensure that experiences of rough sleeping are brief, our aim is for everyone experiencing rough sleeping to have an appropriate and timely offer of support, tailored to their needs and the services they are eligible for, and that all agencies have the tools they need to unlock this support.

6. Our policies on intervention centre around: up to £500 million to extend the Rough Sleeping Initiative for a further 3 years to provide the bedrock of tailored local services and make the most of multi-year funding; tailored support for at-risk groups – including bespoke support for people that experience long-term and cyclical rough sleeping (also known to local authorities at Target Priority Group/Target Thousand in London); promoting the NICE guidelines on delivering person-centred, trauma-informed approaches in psychologically informed environments; transforming voluntary and community provision through the new £10 million Night Shelter Transformation Fund, including encouraging a move towards more appropriate single-room accommodation; building on our ‘exhaust all options’ approach to reducing the number of people sleeping rough who are non- UK nationals through significant improvements to the Rough Sleeping Support Service and supporting individuals to take up the voluntary returns process; and continued funding to improve the StreetLink service so it is easier for members of the public to play their part.

Acting now: How will we achieve it?

To achieve our ambition:

1) We will extend investment into co-ordinated local rough sleeping services and ensure tailored support to meet individual needs, including through the £500 million Rough Sleeping Initiative 2022-25 and the £10 million Night Shelter Transformation Fund to increase provision of quality single-room provision within the night shelter sector

a. Up to £500 million multi-year investment into our flagship Rough Sleeping Initiative 22-25

The Rough Sleeping Initiative (RSI) was first announced in March 2018 and sought to make an immediate impact on the rising levels of rough sleeping. Following its introduction, the number of people rough sleeping on a single night fell for the first time in 8 years (since 2010) and numbers have continued to decline every year since (an estimated 2,440 people sleeping rough on a single night in autumn 2021, down 49% from its peak in 2017). The RSI provides tailored funding to local authorities to reduce the number of people sleeping rough in their area and enhance services for those at risk of sleeping rough. This work is supported by DLUHC’s resident team of expert rough sleeping advisers, covering every region in England.

The government is committed to continuing this vital funding and is investing up to an additional £500 million over the next 3 years (2022-23, 23-24, 24-25). This multi-year commitment will provide certainty over the longer-term to enable greater planning and the maturation of services to support areas to reduce the flow of new people sleeping rough, as well as intervene for people already on the streets. In 2022-25 the RSI will fund a breadth of services. These include up to 14,000 beds in 2022/23 of which up to 7,000 is ‘surge’ accommodation, to be used flexibly over the year as immediate off the street provision. It will also fund £150 million for outreach and in-reach support – the primary mechanism by which local authorities engage with people sleeping rough or at risk of sleeping rough, and over £30 million for health interventions, including dual diagnosis workers and mental health support. As part of this funding, local authorities are expected to work in partnership with other local partners to deliver a holistic, system-wide and person-centred approach to meeting the needs of people experiencing rough sleeping. We will promote better collaboration between local authorities, especially in London where joined-up working between Boroughs, London Councils and the GLA are the best mechanism to a coordinated and responsive approach to rough sleeping.

We recognise that different forms of partnership and collaborative ways of working will look different in different areas.

b. Embedding guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to put the person at the centre of support

In March 2022, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published guidelines on ‘integrated health and social care for people experiencing homelessness’, setting out recommended approaches for support. This is focused on delivering person- centred, empathetic, non-judgemental support and trauma-informed care – recognising that people’s behaviour and engagement with services is influenced by their traumatic experiences, socioeconomic circumstances and previous experiences of services.

It recommends psychologically informed environments and co-design and co-delivery of services and delivery in line with other NICE guidelines on adult social care, adult mental health and other NHS services. These guidelines are not just for health and social care practitioners, but relevant for all those who engage with and support people experiencing homelessness including rough sleeping – from local authorities (including housing services), commissioners and providers of services, people who experience homelessness, their families, advocates, and the public. We will strive to embed these principles into everything that we and our partners do.

c. Tailoring interventions to ensure that support meets people’s specific needs

There is no ‘one-size-fits-all-approach’ when it comes to helping people off the streets and into recovery towards an independent life. This is why we encourage services to take a person-centred approach to support. There are some specific personal characteristics that can often define someone’s experience with rough sleeping. Many of these have been covered elsewhere in this strategy, such as having been in care, having been in prison, or having served in the Armed Forces or not having come from the UK. We are committed to helping local authorities and the wider sector to deliver tailored support to meet these needs, particularly on the following:

• People “living on the streets” and experiencing multiple disadvantage: We know that the longer a person stays on the streets the more complex their needs can become and for those individuals there are often significant barriers to overcome, including mistrust of services, before they will engage. That is why we ask all local authorities to ensure bespoke plans are in place for those people sleeping rough who have spent the longest time on the streets and have the highest complexity of need, as part of their “Target Priority Group”. Local authorities can then use funding such as the Rough Sleeping Initiative to deliver these plans, which could involve work to build trust, for instance through employing specialist workers such as navigators, and in the longer-term to support them into accommodation, where options might include Housing First, supported housing or other housing-led interventions depending on the individual. Our new data-led framework will also include a new metric for people repeatedly rough sleeping to help local areas track progress in helping this group.

• Women: We recognise that women sleeping on the streets have different experiences and needs to men, particularly relating to experience of violence and abuse, and that services may need to be delivered differently in order to meet the needs of women. It is vital that local areas consider the needs of women sleeping rough and commission services based on an assessment of the needs of their local community, for example in programmes like the Rough Sleeping Initiative (RSI) which supports a range of services, such as a Women’s’ Safe Space in Camden to a Women’s Service Navigator in Preston. The government’s Female Offender Strategy aims to improve outcomes for female offenders, many of whom often spend time on the streets, through: earlier intervention; an emphasis on community-based solutions; and an aim to make custody as effective and decent as possible for women there.

• Victims of domestic abuse and sexual violence: It is absolutely critical that victims of domestic abuse get the support they deserve – especially when they have a co-occurring housing need. The 2021 Domestic Abuse Act puts a legal duty on local authorities to provide support in safe accommodation for domestic abuse victims and their children who need to flee their homes to be safe. This Act also extends priority need for homelessness assistance to any eligible person who is homeless as a result of being a victim of domestic abuse. The government has invested more than £330 million since 2014 to provide support in safe accommodation, with refuge bed spaces increasing by more than 20% over the past 12 years. The Domestic Abuse Statutory Guidance recognises that individuals can be made homeless by domestic abuse and that the risk of homelessness can prevent a victim from leaving a home shared with a perpetrator. These risks and barriers may be exacerbated if victims also experience economic abuse and lack financial independence. The Domestic Abuse Statutory Guidance sets out further information on homelessness, housing response and safe accommodation.

In recognition of the particular needs of people experiencing rough sleeping and impacted by domestic abuse and sexual violence, a further £5.7 million is being invested between 2021 and 2023 in the Respite Rooms programme. Respite Rooms provide a safe, single gender space for a short period of time, with intensive, trauma- informed support to make choices and decisions around next steps for recovery. This, along with other commitments in the government’s Tackling Domestic Abuse Action Plan and Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy will help to ensure victims do not remain with their abuser for fear of not having a roof over their head.

• LGBT: We recognise that people who identify as LGBT tend to be overrepresented in surveys of homeless people and, as per the evidence in the ‘case for action’ their experiences can differ from non-LGBT counterparts. In order to improve understanding across local authorities and service providers, we recently updated the Homelessness Case Level Information System (H-CLIC) data specification to remove the current confusion between the questions of sex and gender. This will improve records of LGBT homelessness cases and provide central and local government with better information on the needs of LGBT people accessing their services. This includes how we record and monitor the outcomes of transgender individuals in the homelessness system. In addition, the government has committed to working with experts in the LGBT and homelessness sector to set up roundtables to identify and share good practice to support local authorities in discharging their duties, including ensuring Homelessness Case Level Information Collection (H-CLIC) data on sexual orientation and gender identity is gathered effectively, and in their efforts to striving to reduce the impact of LGBT homelessness.

• Young People: Since 2018, we have seen the number of young people sleeping rough reduce by 62%, from 296 in 2018 to 112 in the most recent rough sleeping snapshot (2021). While this is significant progress, there is still more to do. Putting prevention at the heart of how local authorities approach youth homelessness has been front and centre of our work in recent years, as we have funded resources, workshops and seminars for local authorities to improve their capability in this space. This is on top of our Youth Homelessness Advice and Support team in DLUHC who work directly with local authorities on improving links with children’s services to tackle specific challenges within local areas.

We have built our understanding of the gaps in support for young people who face homelessness, including rough sleeping, from speaking to young people with lived experience through our engagement with Youth Voice, and the broader sector. Young people face particular challenges in all-age accommodation, where they may find themselves sharing facilities with adults experiencing multiple disadvantages. That is why we will be encouraging priority local authorities to bid for youth-specific supported accommodation as a part of our new Single Homelessness Accommodation Project (SHAP), which will be open to targeted local authorities later this year (see chapter on ‘Recovery’ for greater detail on SHAP). Additionally, £2.4 million of the Rough Sleeping Initiative 2022-25 is going towards funding youth services in local areas.

• Victims of modern slavery: We recognise the potential risk of vulnerable individuals who are currently, or at risk of, homelessness, including rough sleeping, becoming victims of modern slavery. The National Referral Mechanism (NRM) is the process by which the UK identifies and supports potential and confirmed adult victims of modern slavery by connecting them with appropriate support, including through the government funded Modern Slavery Victim Care Contract (MSVCC), support provided by local authorities, asylum services, and wider state support services such as the NHS. Victims can access a comprehensive package of support through the MSVCC, including safehouse accommodation where necessary, financial support, and access to a dedicated support worker ensuring victims receive tailored support necessary for them to begin rebuilding their lives, engage with the criminal justice system, and transition back into the community following their modern slavery experience. Support workers will work closely with individuals to develop a transition plan detailing next steps for meeting recovery needs arising from their modern slavery experience, including supporting victims to secure longer-term accommodation in the community, in order to support their transition out of MSVCC support, if and when they are able to do so.

To bolster the housing support available to victims of modern slavery, we are making changes to the Shared Accommodation Rate (SAR) of the Local Housing Allowance (LHA). From October 2022, a new exemption from the SAR for victims of modern slavery who are under the age of 35, living alone and renting privately will be in place. This will ensure they are able to receive the higher one-bedroom LHA rate, improving access to suitable accommodation in the Private Rented Sector. If victims are unable to secure settled accommodation and are at risk of homelessness, they are able to access support from local authorities’ homelessness services. To facilitate this, we have updated the modern slavery chapter of the Homelessness Code of Guidance to help local authorities understand the NRM and how it interacts with statutory homelessness duties.

We are committed to improving our understanding of the interactions between homelessness and modern slavery. This is why we have added modern slavery as a support need to the Homelessness Case Level Information Collection (H-CLIC) system. We will continue work with partners across the modern slavery and homelessness sector and the Home Office to build our evidence base to help ensure services are recognising and meeting the needs of modern slavery victims.

d. Transforming voluntary and community provision with £10 million investment over the next 3 years, including to encourage a move towards quality single-room provision

We are committed to learning the lessons from COVID-19. During the pandemic, the voluntary, community and faith sectors provided unprecedented support to people who were experiencing homelessness and rough sleeping. We provided £3.8 million in 21/22 through the Homelessness Winter Transformation Fund for organisations to operate in a COVID-secure way, which included adopting new operating principles for night shelters, and moving away from communal settings to quality single-room provision. During the pandemic single-room accommodation was necessary to inhibit the spread of the virus and allow people to self- isolate. It has since been widely agreed amongst sector partners that single-room accommodation is more suitable for those experiencing rough sleeping than communal sleeping settings. Housing Justice’s A New Season for Night Shelters report affirms this, by showing that single-room accommodation gives people increased safety and stability and improved access to support and employment. That is why the government will invest a further £10 million through the Night Shelter Transformation Fund, into the voluntary, community and faith sectors over the next 3 years, alongside broader funding through the Rough Sleeping Initiative, to support organisations to develop their provision and offer accommodation and services that better suits individual needs and contributes to long-term recovery. This funding will complement revised operating principles, which give guidance to the sector about providing services safely after the pandemic. We know this funding will be of particular importance for hard-to-reach groups, such as people rough sleeping not from the UK with restricted eligibility for public funds, where we know night shelters play a vital role in providing support. This fund will aim to:

i. Support the sector toward an enhanced accommodation offer, facilitating a shift from communal and rotating night shelter provision toward higher-quality static accommodation offers which give people the space and dignity they need to begin turning their lives around.

ii. Support organisations to develop and diversify the services they provide, moving toward community-based services for people experiencing homelessness and rough sleeping, including tenancy sustainment, advice and advocacy, employment support and day services.

iii. Provide training and advice to improve the stability and resilience of individual organisations and the sector as a whole.

iv. Encourage the improvement of strategic and operational relationships between night shelter organisations, the wider voluntary sector and local authorities to ensure that their efforts are complimentary and facilitate partnership working to the benefit of local areas

v. Bring an end to the pattern of cyclical, seasonal service provision, enabling year-round provision that meets people’s needs

e. Continuing to protect the population from COVID-19

Whilst for many of us the threat from COVID-19 recedes, many people sleeping rough are still threatened by the most severe effects, due to poor health and/or not yet being fully vaccinated. We must make sure we continue to protect vulnerable individuals through continued support to get vaccinated, access to testing for homeless settings and access to the right healthcare.

We continue to directly protect people from any future risk of COVID-19 through the on-going offer of free COVID-19 vaccinations, the offer of free annual flu vaccines for those who are eligible and continuing targeted efforts to increase vaccination uptake and ensure there is robust data in place to inform future interventions if required. The government has also committed to continuing the delivery of free symptomatic testing for people living or working in homelessness settings in 2022/23, due to the increased risks in these settings caused by shared facilities, communal air spaces, and the underlying health needs of people who access them. Asymptomatic lateral flow testing will also be made available in these settings during periods of high prevalence of the virus.

2) We will build on our ‘exhaust all options’ approach with non-UK nationals sleeping rough to make sure those who have restricted eligibility for public funds have a clear pathway off the streets

As the rough sleeping snapshot 2021 found, a quarter of people sleeping rough nationally are not from the UK, rising to nearly half in London. Since the pandemic we have seen local authorities looking to exhaust all options to support this group away from the streets: we want to see this continue. For those here legally but with restricted eligibility for public funds, we want to see them get appropriate support to sustain a life away from the streets. For those here illegally, we want to ensure people return to their home country swiftly and receive the appropriate support to do this.

a. Reforming the Rough Sleeping Support Service to help swiftly clarify and resolve the immigration status of non-UK nationals who are sleeping rough

In 2021, the government committed to review the Rough Sleeping Support Service (RSSS) to ensure that it better meets its intended aims. The review has been user-led, informed by workshops attended by a range of local authorities and third sector organisations and supported by an Advisory Panel made up of experts from local government, homelessness and migrant advisory sectors. As part of the strategy, the government commits to implement the reform recommended by this process to ensure that individuals facing homelessness, including rough sleeping, can have their immigration statuses swiftly resolved.

The Government is committed to moving the service outside of Immigration Enforcement and implementing a new service this year which ensures vulnerability is at the centre of our work and that is supported by prompt and transparent customer service. This reform will include:

• A refresh of RSSS guidance and user templates, as well as exploring what more we can do to improve immigration awareness for frontline staff; and
• As we work to implement the new service this year, we are committed to continued close working with the sector to ensure that the new model best meets user needs. Building on the success of the Home Office Homelessness Team’s case escalation offer which, over 12 months, has seen over 600 immigration cases resolved. This team will continue to provide an interim offer of escalation whilst the new model is introduced.

b. Introducing an offer of tailored support for those that wish to return to their home country voluntarily

For some people sleeping rough, who are not from the UK, the best option may be for them to return to their home country. Individuals such as failed asylum seekers or people who have overstayed their visa who do not have leave to remain should return to their home country. The government already has in place a voluntary returns scheme, which includes financial support for an individual’s return. However, we recognise that people experiencing rough sleeping may face additional barriers to taking up the offer of voluntary return and reintegrating into their country of return. That is why the government is committed to piloting improved support to explore what more we can do to increase take up and support of those engaged with the voluntary returns process.

3) We will provide local authorities, police and other agencies with the tools they need to work effectively together to address rough sleeping, protect the public and make communities safe for all

a. Support better multi-agency working between local authorities, the police and other enforcement agencies through guidance and sharing of best practice to address rough sleeping, protect the public and make communities safe for all

Some instances of rough sleeping – along with street activity such as begging or drinking and drug-use which is sometimes, but by no means always, associated with it – can cause legitimate public concern about safety and the impact on local communities, alongside concern for the welfare of those involved. The police and other partners are responsible for community safety and tackling crime that may be perpetrated either by or against individuals rough sleeping and - in partnership with local authorities and other agencies - they play an important role in responding to these concerns. We will support better multi-agency working between local authorities, the police and other enforcement agencies through guidance and sharing of best practice to respond to these concerns and encourage vulnerable people to engage with support. Where activity puts individuals involved at risk or makes the public or public realm feel unsafe, it is vital that the local authorities, police and other agencies are able to intervene.

b. Repeal the outdated Vagrancy Act whilst ensuring the police, local authorities and other agencies have the powers and tools to respond effectively to begging, support vulnerable individuals and help communities feel safer

Following our review of the Vagrancy Act, we are committed to repealing the outdated Vagrancy Act once government has had the chance to consider any suitable replacement legislation. In doing so, it is important that we combine supporting vulnerable individuals with ensuring that the police, local authorities and other agencies remain able to protect the public and make communities feel safe for all. This includes responding effectively to begging, which is sometimes – but by no means always – linked to rough sleeping. It is important that local authorities, the police and other partners have tools to reduce the detrimental effects begging can have on communities, public spaces and, in some instances, the individuals themselves. We launched a public consultation to inform any appropriate and modern replacement for the Vagrancy Act, and we will issue a government response in due course.

4) We will make it easier for the public to play their part in supporting people sleeping rough

a. Continued investment to improve the way in which the public can make referrals when they see a person sleeping rough

We know that rough sleeping is a subject that is close to people’s hearts and one the public wants to see addressed. We want to make it as easy as possible for members of the public who want to contribute to the effort to do so. In 2012, the government launched StreetLink, an online platform for members of the public to alert local outreach teams to someone they see sleeping rough. The platform is widely used – since the service was established in 2012 up to 31 March 2022, 79,417 alerts have led to an individual being found while sleeping rough.

Contacting StreetLink is often the most effective action a member of the public can take to support someone away from the street because it helps local authorities identify those sleeping rough so they can determine the appropriate support. It can be done so via the website www.streetlink.org.uk or by using the mobile phone app (available to download on both Apple and Android systems). StreetLink referrals are passed onto the local outreach team or local authority who will use the information provided to locate the individual who is sleeping rough and offer them access to services and help to get them off the streets as quickly as possible. However, as technology improves there is an opportunity for us to improve StreetLink and make it easier and more intuitive for members of the public to use. That is why we are committing to continuing our investment in StreetLink to develop the platform to improve user experience and referral quality, empowering the public to join our campaign to end rough sleeping.

We will partner with digital and sector experts to deliver a great service that means the public can help the important work of local authorities and outreach teams and make a vital contribution to our collective efforts to end rough sleeping.

b. Championing and sharing best practice led by the rail sector

The public may often come into contact with someone experiencing rough sleeping on public transport, such as trains or underground metro systems. Organisations in the rail sector are leading by example through the innovative approaches they are developing to support someone experiencing rough sleeping. A few successful examples include:

• StreetLink: LNER and AVANTI have recently run successful pilots to promote the use of StreetLink by staff and the public. We will build on the lessons learned from these pilots to promote the use of StreetLink in railway stations, to directly connect people rough sleeping on rail to support services.
• Outreach: Since 2020, Network Rail, in partnership with Shelter, has been conducting outreach services providing immediate support to those sleeping rough in the Birmingham New Street and Manchester Piccadilly stations and the surrounding areas. The pilots aim to support people into accommodation and link them up with other support services to help cope with the often complex needs of those referred to Shelter. To date, the outreach services have engaged with 410 people, of which 196 people have been supported into temporary accommodation, 14 into permanent accommodation and 15 people have gained employment.
• Training: Training is provided to all frontline staff to recognise and signpost vulnerable people to the right services to help them, including people sleeping rough. The Safeguarding on Rail Scheme is the industry’s flagship programme and a contractual obligation for all operators that will be rolled out across the network with the introduction of the new rail contracts under GBR (Great British Railways).
• Employment: The rail industry has successful examples of providing the skills and support needed to help people with experience of rough sleeping into long-term employment, including the Empowering Communities programme led by construction firms, Skanska, Costain and STRABAG working in partnership with HS2 Ltd. The programme aims to create jobs for those experiencing worklessness and homelessness, help young people to develop new STEM skills and access apprenticeships, and support community projects. We will continue to bring to light opportunities where employment is an option for people experiencing rough sleeping (see Recovery chapter for further details on employment).
• Data: We are currently working with Camden and Brighton councils as case studies to test data sharing of rough sleeping on transport to better connect people to the services and support they need. We will continue to explore where it is possible to better join up local authorities with the rail sector to develop data-sharing and promote stronger collaboration and partnership.

We will continue to champion the brilliant work the transport sector is doing to end rough sleeping on rail. This includes maintaining the ‘Rough Sleeping on Rail Charter’ established by DfT to share best practice and, in partnership with Network Rail, provide a forum to bring together rail industry leaders to ensure coordination across the industry on solutions for helping people experiencing rough sleeping.

Case study: Intervention in action

Pan London Provision – London Outreach Team

Davide arrived in the UK from Europe in 2010 to work in the construction industry in London. He was working and renting for many years but, unfortunately, about 6 years after he arrived, he started to struggle with a gambling addiction, which he had never had before. With the generous help and support from friends, he managed to stay in accommodation and continue working for a few years. However, eventually things got too difficult, and he found himself street homeless.

He was approached by a street outreach team in central London while rough sleeping who offered to help him. At the time, there was only limited access to immigration advice for rough sleepers and the outreach team struggled to help Davide understand what his options were to access benefits and get back on his feet.

During the pandemic, he was placed in emergency hotel provision in London where he was referred for immigration advice. He was supported by an immigration adviser to make an application under the EU Settlement Scheme, and he was granted settled status. During his stay in the hotel, he was also linked with support to address his gambling addiction and he has now stopped gambling for over 2 years. While at the hotel, Davide began a training course in care work with a view to eventually care for the elderly. Before finishing this course, he found work in construction, but is keen to come back to this in the future and give back.

Home Office Homelessness Team

The Home Office Homelessness Team (HOHT) have provided a point of contact for local authorities and associated governing bodies to escalate immigration cases already in the Home Office system, in instances where someone is currently sleeping rough, or at risk of doing so.

Within a 12-month period, over 1000 cases have been referred to the HOHT. All cases have been reviewed and where appropriate escalated to the relevant Department with the aim of prioritising for effective case resolution for the vulnerable individuals involved. To date, over 60% of cases escalated have received an outcome, of which 82% have received a case resolution and 18% have been confirmed as having no application outstanding.

Man X, aged between 20-25 years old, became homeless after being housed by a third sector organisation but had reached the end of his 6-month stay. His case was escalated via the HO Homelessness Team, and he received a positive decision on his application after just over a week, allowing him to positively move forward with his life. Going forward, he will be supported by several relevant local organisations and his support networks with accessing benefits and more permanent accommodation. Since the grant of leave, he has been learning about documentary making, production and editing. This is his passion, and he is beyond happy that he will now be able to gain some professional qualifications and start a career.

From The Streets Of Reading Into The Nova Project & Olivia’s Story

Since December 2020 Reading Borough Council has commissioned St Mungo’s, utilising DLUHC Rough Sleeping Accommodation Programme (RSAP) funding, to deliver a 10-bed female only, 24/7 staffed high support project. It aims to ensure Reading’s most vulnerable women, who have formerly repeatedly slept rough and cyclically accessed traditional supported housing, have a different accommodation with support offer to move away from street lifestyles and associates. The Nova Project team provides 24/7 staffing and wraparound support.

The consistency of staff team, their availability and rapport with clients ensures a safe space for informal support, listening and engagement, as well as holistic client-led activities.

Olivia’s Story: Olivia, now in her 40s, has been a resident at the Nova Project for over a year. She was first known to Reading outreach services in 2008. Olivia was intermittently sleeping rough, selling or exchanging sex and pregnant and having had her baby and other children previously taken into care, Olivia moved into a traditional supported accommodation unit in Reading which she chose to leave to pursue a domestically abusive relationship. Throughout the years, Olivia experienced domestically abusive relationships, repeated contact with the criminal justice system and both her offending and selling or exchanging sex were enabling her drug and alcohol misuse. She was subsequently found bedded down and the outreach team supported her to present as homeless to the Council.

The St Mungo’s Reading outreach team, enhanced since 2019 by Rough Sleeping Initiative (RSI) funded from DLUHC, identified Olivia on the streets as vulnerable and having previously slept rough. Since moving into the Nova Project, Olivia drinks less, has stopped selling or exchanging sex entirely and engages with health and substance misuse support offered by in-reach organisations. Olivia has an excellent relationship with her key worker who supports only two other women at the project. She has been totally discharged from Integrated Offender Management and Probation Services. The Project has undertaken a significant amount of work with Olivia, and all of the women at the Project, around healthy relationships and partnerships. Olivia’s relationships with her family have improved and she has started letterbox contact, via social workers, with some of her youngest children.

Summary of Chapter 4 – Intervention

1. We will extend investment into co- ordinated local rough sleeping services and ensure tailored support to meet individual needs, including through the £500 million Rough Sleeping Initiative 2022-25 and the £10 million Night Shelter Transformation Fund to increase provision of quality single-room provision within the night shelter sector

• Up to £500 million multi-year investment into our flagship Rough Sleeping Initiative 2022-25
• Embedding guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to put the person at the centre of support
• Tailoring interventions to ensure that support meets people’s specific needs
• Transforming voluntary and community provision with £10 million investment over the next 3 years, including to encourage a move towards quality single-room provision
• Continuing to protect the population from COVID-19

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2. We will build on our ‘exhaust all options’ approach with non-UK nationals sleeping rough to make sure those who have restricted eligibility for public funds have a clear pathway off the streets

• Reforming the Rough Sleeping Support Service to help swiftly clarify and resolve the immigration status of non-UK nationals who are sleeping rough
• Introducing an offer of tailored support for those that wish to return to their home country voluntarily

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3. We will provide local authorities, police and other agencies with the tools they need to work effectively together to address rough sleeping, protect the public and make communities safe for all

• Support better multi-agency working between local authorities, the police and other enforcement agencies through guidance and sharing of best practice to address rough sleeping, protect the public and make communities safe for all
• Repeal the outdated Vagrancy Act whilst ensuring the police, local authorities and other agencies have the powers and tools to respond effectively to begging, support vulnerable individuals and help communities feel safer

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4. We will make it easier for the public to play their part in supporting people sleeping rough

• Continued investment to improve the way in which the public can make referrals when they see a person sleeping rough
• Championing and sharing best practice led by the rail sector

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Chapter 5: Recovery

This chapter provides an overview of our approach to recovery – it includes:

• Case for action: what do we know about the most effective measures to support people away from the streets for good?
• Making a change: what is our ambition for recovery to ensure rough sleeping is non-recurring?
• Acting now: what action will we take to achieve our ambition?

Case for action: What do we know?

1. We know that there is a significant variance of needs among people who experience rough sleeping including during their journey to recovery. Some people only sleep rough once and then are not seen on the street sleeping rough again, whilst others, unfortunately, cycle repeatedly in and out of rough sleeping over many years – for example 38% of respondents of the Rough Sleeping Questionnaire (RSQ) 2020 first slept rough over 10 years ago.

2. Suitable, sustainable accommodation is critical to supporting someone to recover from rough sleeping. There is evidence to suggest that those who enter specialist housing-led programmes (such as Housing First) are unlikely to be seen sleeping rough in the subsequent 12 months. Findings from the ‘Effects of the Pandemic on Housing First Pilots and Service Users’ report highlight that people being housed in their own accommodation is crucial in helping achieve stability, mental and physical safety, which can also improve feelings of self-worth and relationships with others.

However, we know there are gaps in appropriate accommodation and in the supply of social and supported housing, for example, in 2019/20, only 2% of new social lets went to people sleeping rough.

3. Still, evidence suggests that recovery needs to go beyond simply finding accommodation. While an offer of suitable accommodation is hugely important, we know that many people who experience rough sleeping may often be experiencing multiple disadvantages and need to access support alongside accommodation to ensure they receive the right treatment and are able to sustain their tenancy. For example, CHAIN data for people sleeping rough in London (April 2021 – March 2022) found 35% of people seen rough sleeping and who were assessed were found to have difficulties with more than one of alcohol, drugs and mental health, demonstrating the overlapping vulnerabilities people sleeping rough may have^{[footnote 17]}. Our Rough Sleeping Questionnaire (RSQ) 2020 revealed that 82% of respondents self-reported a mental health need and 60% a current substance misuse need, and we know that ill health can be both a cause and consequence of rough sleeping. A systematic review conducted by the Centre for Homelessness Impact (CHI) found that interventions that offered the highest levels of support alongside accommodation were more effective than programmes that provided low, or no support. Interventions with support programmes tailored to the individual reported better housing stability and outcomes. Stable and appropriate housing is also crucial to enabling sustained recovery from drug misuse, and sustained recovery is essential to someone’s ability to maintain stable accommodation.

4. We know that for people who are rough sleeping or experiencing other forms of homelessness, there can be barriers to accessing employment and training such as a lack of stable housing and support needs. The RSQ 2020 showed that, at the time, 80% of respondents had previously worked – suggesting that most people experiencing rough sleeping have at least some prior experiences of employment and that with the right support, work could be a key part of their route out of rough sleeping.

Employment improves both the long and short-term accommodation prospects for people experiencing rough sleeping, as income increases accommodation options, and an employment contract will improve the negotiating position of any prospective tenants. Employment can also provide the stability to improve wellbeing and motivation. Tailored support ranging from light touch employment advice to more specialist interventions will be needed depending on an individuals’ circumstances.

5. We want to ensure those experiencing rough sleeping are supported back to independence and into their communities. We know that recovery support needs to be holistic and person-centred – that is a combination of suitable, sustainable accommodation coupled with flexible support that is tailored to people’s individual needs and is available for as long as it is needed.

Making a change: What is our ambition?

6. We aim to ensure every person sleeping rough receives the support they need to recover and move away from the streets long-term, helping them back into a stable home, and into work or training if they can. This will help to ensure their rough sleeping experience is non-recurring. To deliver this route to an independent life off the streets for good our policies are centred around delivering an offer of stable accommodation to call home, appropriate health treatment and wrap-around support to address their needs and viable routes into employment.

7. When it comes to accommodation, housing- led interventions can be the foundation of a happy, secure and sustainable life away from the streets. The needs of people who are sleeping rough are diverse and their support and accommodation options must be tailored to those needs as people progress on their journey of recovery from sleeping rough. As people recover, some may benefit from stays in supported housing, including hostels, and a small number of those currently sleeping rough may need and want support in those settings in the longer-term.

8. Local authorities and their sector partners, in coproduction with their residents, are in the best place to commission the right type of accommodation to meet local needs and because of that we support a wide range of housing interventions across our funding programmes, including a strong focus on housing-led solutions. There is no one size fits all, and interventions will range from Housing First, high-quality, dignified emergency accommodation such as that funded through our Night Shelter Transformation Fund, and support to access and sustain Private Rented Sector tenancies or social housing tenancies, alongside good quality short and long-term supported housing.

9. Our ambition is to enhance the quality of accommodation so that it is safe, secure and comfortable. We must ensure housing is adaptable to meet the changing needs of people sleeping rough. It is also vital that staff and volunteers working both in and outside of the accommodation are trained, supported and championing the latest best practice, to ensure that the accommodation provides a steppingstone away from the street and supports recovery to a long-term home that people can build a future in.

10. We know we need a breadth of provision of accommodation and targeted health and employment support that is tailored to help those that need it to sustain their recovery away from the streets. We support a housing-led approach that enables local areas to provide what is needed in an area, including Housing First and other housing- led interventions; and we support the need for psychologically informed environments that take into account individuals’ psychological and emotional needs, and their experiences of trauma. This strategy builds on what is already working and goes further through:

• a new £200m Single Homelessness Accommodation Programme to provide a range of supported housing and Housing First, in addition to completing delivery of the existing Rough Sleeping Accommodation Programme;
• extending the Housing First pilots to provide a robust evidence base for Housing First and using our capital programmes and multi-year RSI funding to embed Housing First and housing-led interventions more widely;
• delivering our commitments to improve the quality of supported housing and provision for 16- and 17-year-old looked-after children and care leavers;
• strengthening support from jobcentres and a new industry covenant to support people experiencing rough sleeping into jobs; and
• expanding support for drug and alcohol treatment and mental health.

Acting now: How will we achieve it?

To achieve this:

1) We will support both housing-led approaches and Housing First, and will make sure specialist homes are in place for people experiencing rough sleeping

a. 6,000 longer term homes through our flagship Rough Sleeping Accommodation Programme

Suitable accommodation that meets the needs of the individual is key to a person’s recovery, ability to sustain a tenancy and to live independently. To achieve this, in March 2021, the government committed to delivering 6,000 move-on homes, backed by £433m of investment until 2023/24 as part of the Rough Sleeping Accommodation Programme (RSAP). The Programme not only provides move-on homes, which are available as long-term national assets, but also delivers high-quality accompanying support services to help people rough sleeping or those with a history of sleeping rough to settle into their accommodation and life off the streets. As of May 2022, some 3,200 homes have been delivered for people experiencing rough sleeping across the country, and we remain confident that we will achieve the overall target of 6,000 homes by the end of this Parliament as we continue the government’s ambition to end rough sleeping.

b. Extending Housing First until 2025, supporting people experiencing multiple disadvantage

Housing First is an approach to providing housing and support that prioritises access to stable accommodation and provides intensive wrap-around support to help an individual address any other support needs they may have – including mental health, drugs and alcohol misuse. It has an impressive international record in helping people facing multiple disadvantages to recover and stay off the streets for good. As demonstrated by the original £28 million investment, the government is committed to testing this approach to learn and evolve our interventions to end rough sleeping. The Housing First pilots are now in their fifth year and, based on monitoring information provided by the pilots, as of June 2022, they have cumulatively supported over 1,300 people experiencing entrenched and cyclical rough sleeping across 23 local authorities. The pilots are currently supporting over 900 individuals and over 1,000 individuals have been provided with accommodation over the pilot’s lifetime^{[footnote 19]}. We have already published two evaluation reports and a Housing First toolkit. We will continue to consider the findings of the evaluation carefully to understand the role of Housing First in ending rough sleeping across the country and share learning on how to overcome challenges within an English context. In recognition of this, and to align with the end of its evaluation, we have committed a further £13.9 million to extend these Housing First pilots into 2024, after which Housing First services will continue into 2025 through local areas’ Rough Sleeping Initiative (RSI) programmes. We have committed just over £32 million for Housing First initiatives and Housing First Pilot Areas via the RSI 2022-25 programme^{[footnote 20]} to support areas to build holistic local housing-led provisions. We have also committed to expanding Housing First through the new Single Homelessness Accommodation Programme (SHAP) funding streams. (For more information on SHAP, see the commitment to address unacceptable poor quality supported housing and increase supply below). Alongside this funding, we will be working with Homeless Link to explore the feasibility of a Fidelity Framework. This would support both existing and future schemes to uphold the 7 principles of Housing First and drive a consistent approach across the sector.

c. Providing councils with 3-year funding certainty through the Rough Sleeping Initiative, helping to build sustainable pathways out of rough sleeping

Through the Rough Sleeping Initiative, we are funding up to 14,000 beds in 2022/23, tailored to the need of the local area. Up to £500 million investment into the Rough Sleeping Initiative 2022-25 will fund a great breadth of accommodation options used flexibly to deliver sustainable pathways that are tailored to a local area and the circumstances of the people that need support. In 2022-25, this funding includes: over £32 million for Housing First services; up to £67 million for immediate off the street accommodation – primarily to be used flexibly over the programme as need shifts; up to £23 million to access Private Rented Sector accommodation; up to £59 million to fund move-on from first stage accommodation, including rapid rehousing and supported housing. We will continue to support local authorities and hold them to account to deliver strengthened housing pathways to help people away from the streets into recovery.

d. £15 million social investment to deliver over 200 secure and affordable homes for people experiencing, or at risk of, rough sleeping

There is a clear role for social investment to help bring on-stream a new supply of housing for vulnerable people and we continue to seek new opportunities to develop the pipeline of social investment. To enable this, in June 2021, the government announced its investment of £15 million with Big Society Capital who matched it to create an initial capital fund of £30 million. The initial capital investment aimed to deliver over 200 homes of secure and affordable accommodation for people experiencing rough sleeping or at risk of rough sleeping. This fund has attracted further third-party investment (£86.5 million to date), allowing more accommodation to be delivered, bringing the total forecast to c. 550 homes by the end of 2022. The programme includes a multi-year evaluation so that we can continue to evolve our approach to support, as we grow our understanding of the role of social investment in addressing homelessness and rough sleeping.

We will address unacceptable poor quality supported housing and increase supply, including through a new £200 million Single Homelessness Accommodation Programme

a. £200 million investment into our new Single Homelessness Accommodation Programme (SHAP) to plug the gap in existing rough sleeping accommodation provision

We recognise that there is a need in many areas for accommodation with support that is suitable for adults experiencing multiple disadvantage, both long-term and good quality hostel accommodation, as well as specialist accommodation for young people (under the age of 25) who are already experiencing rough sleeping or are at risk. Whilst accommodation provided through the Rough Sleeping Accommodation Programme (RSAP) goes some way to meeting this demand, the wrap- around support or type of the accommodation may not always be sufficient or appropriate for individuals needing higher levels of support.

That is why the government is launching a new fund through the Single Homelessness Accommodation Programme (SHAP) that will deliver up to 2,400 homes by March 2025, including supported housing and Housing First accommodation and accommodation for young people at risk of homelessness including rough sleeping. The programme will include funding for the necessary wrap-around support tailored to the individual’s needs for a period of 3 years.

b. £300 million investment in the Adult Social Care Reform White Paper to connect housing with health and care, and boost the supply of supported housing including for people with a history or risk of rough sleeping

In the Adult Social Care Reform White Paper, People at the Heart of Care, government recognised the importance of long-term care and support for people experiencing rough sleeping and committed to ‘ensure that health and care needs are met and to support our manifesto commitment to end rough sleeping by 2024’.

Many people sleeping rough experience early onset frailty equivalent to people who are in their 80s, but struggle to access the long-term care and support (including through Care Act Assessments) that they need or do not access primary care services. It is vital that those with physical or learning disabilities and those living with mental ill-health can access support when they need it. The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) in partnership with the Local Government Association (LGA) has recently published good practice on supporting people experiencing homelessness, including best practice on how adult social care can support people sleeping rough. This is publicly available on the ADASS website.

The Adult Social Care White Paper (People at the Heart of Care: adult social care reform) included a new investment of at least £300 million to embed the strategic commitment into all local places to: connect housing with health and care; to boost the supply of supported housing to meet local need; and to increase local expenditure on services for people in supported housing. Over the next 3 years, the fund will support every local place to develop a strategic approach to supported housing, health and care, reflecting the needs of their local population – including people who are sleeping rough or may be at risk of sleeping rough and for whom long-term supported housing is appropriate. Improving partnership working between Adult Social Care, health, housing and homelessness services is critical to delivering the person-centred approach to address both the health and housing needs of an individual.

c. Improving supported housing quality, including through the Supported Housing Improvement Programme with £20 million of funding across 2022-25

Whilst supply of supported housing is at the core of our strategy, our ambition is not just focused on quantity, but also on quality. Between October 2020 and September 2021, the government funded a small number of pilots in England to test innovative approaches to drive up standards in a number of areas severely affected by poor-quality supported housing. The pilots have delivered real results, creating the kind of models for best practice that other local authorities that face this issue will be able to adopt. Building on this, in March 2022, the government announced the Supported Housing Improvement Programme, backed by £20 million over the next 3 years, aimed at helping a wider number of local authorities in some of the worst affected areas of the country to crack down on rogue landlords and ensure supported housing is providing adequate, tailored support and good- quality accommodation for its residents. The programme will be vital to drive up quality in the sector in the immediate future, while the government develops and implements longer

term regulatory changes. Alongside this, in March, the government announced its intention to take forward a package of measures including minimum standards for good quality support and new powers for local authorities to better manage their local supported housing market and ensure that rogue landlords cannot exploit the system. In addition, government will make changes to Housing Benefit regulations to define care, support and supervision to improve quality and value for money in supported housing provision.

d. Over £140 million investment to establish national standards and Ofsted regulation for providers accommodating children in, and leaving, care

Everyone deserves to live in a decent home and we particularly owe this to our young people living in, or leaving care. This is why the government is bringing forward regulations and over £140 million funding to introduce mandatory national standards and Ofsted registration and inspection for currently unregulated providers who accommodate 16- and 17-year-old looked after children and care leavers. Ofsted will begin registering providers from April 2023 and the national standards will become mandatory from autumn 2023. Ofsted will then begin inspecting providers of supported accommodation from April 2024. We expect this to increase the standard of accommodation and support provided to our young people in and leaving care.

3) We will improve the support available to help people with experience of rough sleeping into employment, refreshing the jobcentre offer through best practice and networks of homelessness leads and setting up a covenant with employers to support job opportunities

a. Strengthening models of jobcentre support and partnerships to ensure people can develop their skills and find work

We know that work is key to good physical and mental health, for independent and fulfilling lives, and is key to preventing and recovering from rough sleeping. So once immediate financial and housing needs have been addressed and a level of stability and security achieved, employment is a priority. Of course, for those who have experienced rough sleeping, the timing varies according to the individual and there are flexibilities in the system to tailor requirements and even suspend job-seeking requirements whilst people resolve their housing issues and seek treatment. We will ensure all staff have awareness of these and other flexibilities (such as Universal Credit housing costs paid directly to landlords for those with budgeting needs) and that all requirements placed on people who have experienced rough sleeping are fully appropriate.

Our designated homelessness leads will work as part of the teams in jobcentres to offer tailored support to enable people who have slept rough to access skills and employment support. They will ensure jobcentre support works in tandem with other local provision, for instance with local authorities through the Rough Sleeping Initiative, to address gaps and avoid duplication in the local offer. This will include making sure that people in emergency and move-on accommodation have access to the right support at the right time. In addition to DWP’s mainstream support offer, including the Restart programme, people experiencing rough sleeping continue to have priority access to the Work and Health Programme. Those with health conditions and other complex barriers to employment can also be supported through the Intensive Personalised Employment Support provision.

DWP is now taking this bespoke support for people with complex needs further following successful trials. They are funding £39 million over the next 3 years to roll out the Individual Placement and Support Drug and Alcohol Dependency programme, providing employment support alongside clinical treatment across England. In response to a second recommendation in Dame Carol Black’s review on addiction, it is testing the introduction of drug and alcohol peer mentors to support individuals to disclose their dependency issues, move into treatment and closer into work. In addition, the Joint Work & Health Unit has invested over £65 million to provide 400 employment advisers to work in NHS commissioned Improving Access to Psychological Therapies services in 40% of Clinical Commissioning Groups across England. Given what we know about the strong correlation with mental health problems and alcohol and substance misuse, these programmes should provide unprecedented access to intensive and tailored employment support for many who have experienced or who are at risk of rough sleeping.

This national provision is of course underpinned by locally commissioned support, which has empowered and equipped local jobcentre managers to ensure the right employment- related support is in place for groups with additional barriers and that jobcentres are connected with all services to ensure join up of welfare, employment and other support. The Flexible Support Fund is a tool at the disposal of work coaches and partnership managers, helping individuals with travel, clothing and other work-related costs and funding provision to address employment barriers.

b. Working with businesses to encourage employment of those experiencing rough sleeping through our newly launched employer covenant

Preparation for work is half of the challenge. We want to work with good employers committed to recruiting people with additional barriers and providing support for them to thrive in the workplace. To do this we are launching a new employer covenant with Crisis. The covenant will be a rallying call for business to play its part, selling the benefits of diverse recruitment, providing guidance and best practice to make it a success and generating a wide pool of vacancies which jobcentres, employment providers and homeless charities can match their clients to.

c. Improving identification through the Universal Credit system

We are committed to delivering tailored employment and welfare support to people who are experiencing rough sleeping. Work coaches can already record instances of homelessness to ensure people are supported in the right way throughout all their interactions. DWP will develop additional homeless identifiers to personalise support and capture data to enable better evaluation of support for this group.

d. Funding for tailored employment interventions through the Rough Sleeping Initiative

Local authorities are always best placed to tailor the support that an individual in their local area may need. The Rough Sleeping Initiative provides councils with the freedom to do this, including job skills coaching and training provision, as well as funding a number of roles such as, navigators and caseworkers who help with jobs brokerages and developing partnerships with innovative voluntary organisations to maximise job opportunities for those experiencing rough sleeping. The multi- year £500 million investment into the Rough Sleeping Initiative will continue to ensure this vital support is provided to those who need it – helping support and sustain a life into recovery and away from the streets. We are supporting at least £5.5 million of employment schemes across 50 councils, aimed at improving access to work for those who have been rough sleeping and are ready to move onto this next phase of recovery.

4) We will provide significant levels of investment into drug and alcohol treatment to support people experiencing rough sleeping and improve mental health provision

a. Expanding drug and alcohol treatment into a total of 83 local authorities with up to £186.5 million funding

Substance dependency can be a cause and consequence of rough sleeping. It can make it harder for vulnerable individuals to build their lives off the streets and people who are dependent on drugs and alcohol may struggle with financial difficulties, behaviour problems, or relationships, making it harder to sustain accommodation. Improved access to drug and alcohol support is therefore vital if we are to bring an end to rough sleeping. Since 2020/21 the government has spent £50 million to provide substance misuse treatment services for people sleeping rough through the Rough Sleeping Drug and Alcohol Treatment Grant in 63 local authorities. The government is now committing to go further by investing up to £186.5 million into the programme over the next 3 years, expanding the number of local authorities that have access to this extra funding to 83 local authorities plus 5 pan-London projects in 2022/23. We are confident that the multi- disciplinary, holistic and trauma-informed approaches – designed to support people with co-occurring mental health and substance misuse needs – funded by the Rough Sleeping Drug and Alcohol Treatment Grant will continue to deliver positive outcomes for people with experiences of rough sleeping and support their journey to recovery.

b. £53 million investment into housing support for people in drug and alcohol treatment

Addiction is a chronic condition that requires earlier and better treatment, and sustained support. In December 2021, the government published its landmark Drugs Strategy, ‘From Harm to Hope: A Ten-Year Drug Strategy’105, which sets out a long-term vision for real change, with an ambition to reduce overall drug use towards a historic 30-year low, underpinned by a record £3 billion investment to tackle drugs in the next 3 years. A key part of the strategy is housing and housing support, which have a crucial role to play in the success of drug treatment, particularly as many of those entering treatment report a housing need. This is why government has committed £53 million as part of the Drugs Strategy to develop ‘a menu of housing support options’ which will improve recovery outcomes for people in treatment and reduce the flow of people into homelessness and rough sleeping. In line with Dame Carol Black’s recommendations, the funding will also be used to build the evidence base on effective housing support interventions for people in drug and alcohol treatment to inform future policy.

c. Expanding and transforming mental health services for people who experience rough sleeping through the NHS long-term plan and wider £2.3 billion mental health funding

We know that many people who experience rough sleeping also experience mental ill-health. Following the 2018 Rough Sleeping Strategy, DHSC committed to deliver £30 million of specialist homelessness mental health support for people who are sleeping rough, whilst also introducing new integrated models of care for someone living with a serious mental illness. The initial target of 20 high-need areas receiving new specialist mental health provision for people sleeping rough has been exceeded, with 23 sites having been established. There are robust evaluation plans in place to share learning from the sites – including for all areas (whether they have received funding or not) to have a mechanism in place to ensure local mental health services can support people sleeping rough. This is part of a £2.3 billion a year investment into wider mental health services by 2023/24 to enable an extra 2m people in England to access NHS-funded mental health support. Beyond 2023/24, NHSEI will provide recurrent annual funding of £9 million to support the specialist services that have been established as part of the 5-year NHS Long Term Plan programme.

d. Making sure the needs of those experiencing rough sleeping are taken into account in any future Mental Health and Wellbeing Plan

Making sure we have the right provisions in place to support the mental health and wellbeing of our nation is of the utmost importance for this government. In April 2022, DHSC published the Mental Health and Wellbeing Plan discussion paper, to kick-off of a national conversation to inform the development of a new 10-year mental health plan. People who sleep rough, are homeless or are in unstable housing are a key focus of this discussion, and we commit to ensuring that the views of the relevant sector partners and people with lived experience continue to be heard.

Case Study: Recovery In Action

Employment And Engagement Officer – Mansfield District Council

Our Employment & Engagement Officer is recruited through Tuntum Housing Association in Nottinghamshire who have extensive knowledge of working with non-UK nationals (NUKN) and the challenges that can bring. The role works two days a week with NUKN sleeping rough who have the right to work with no recourse to public funds, to help them gain employment so they can afford to live independently in the private rented sector. In 2018 we had an increase in NUKN sleeping rough and accessing our emergency accommodation and it proved challenging to help them move on. This role has worked with the clients to gain ID, settled status, job searching, recruitment agency liaison and even English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) classes to help them move on from rough sleeping and into their own accommodation.

We extended the role of the Employment and Engagement Officer when we started our Housing First project in 2019. This role now works with people who have long history of homelessness and rough sleeping but have moved into their own accommodation. The role explores their employment history and what aspirations they have for the future. From this work, they support people to gain skills, boost confidence through volunteering and help them find employment. For some people who have experienced long periods of rough sleeping, we have helped support them with their learning and to gain qualifications. We have recently had a Housing First Client who has passed her maths GCSE and will continue to build on this success.

In the next 3 years, we are looking to extend the role to deliver skills courses with the support workers in the new resource centre.

Rough Sleeping Initiative / Next Steps Accommodation Programme, Telford & Wrekin, Thomas

Thomas is turning his life around after being re-housed through Telford & Wrekin Council’s Next Steps Accommodation Programme. The 29-year-old had been homeless and living in and out of temporary accommodation for over a decade until the Council stepped in to find him a home. Thomas now lives in a flat in Newport thanks to the programme – which has also helped him to get his whole life back on track. During his spells of homelessness, Thomas turned to a life of drugs and crime which led to several spells in prison. But now his new home has given him a new lease of life and the chance to look forward to a brighter future.

Thomas said:

I was in a bad way and it spiralled. I had no home, I was taking drugs, I wasn’t eating properly and I was in trouble with the law. I had brief spells in shared accommodation but it didn’t work out for me and I found myself mixing with the wrong crowd all the time.

Having a permanent roof over my head through this programme has helped me to sort my life out completely. I’m now drug free, I’m able to see my young daughter regularly and I just feel far more settled. The past is in the past and it’s something I don’t want to go back to.

The Council’s local Rough Sleeping Taskforce initially helped Thomas by providing support and emergency accommodation before he was supported by the Next Steps programme. As part of the Next Steps Programme the Council has purchased 13 empty or disused properties across the borough and has been able to fund additional Tenancy Sustainment Officers to provide support. The properties provide former rough sleepers with their own accommodation with a minimum 12-month tenancy and intensive support from a range of services.

Thomas added:

I’m really grateful for the support I’ve had from council support workers who visit and are in touch regularly to make sure everything is ok. I can’t thank them enough. My advice to anyone who is homeless, if you get offered support from the council through projects like this, accept it with open arms and don’t mess it up. This programme really has been a life-changer for me.

Summary of Chapter 5 – Recovery

1. We will support both housing-led approaches and Housing First, and make sure specialist homes are in place for those experiencing rough sleeping

• 6,000 longer term homes through our flagship Rough Sleeping Accommodation Programme
• Extending Housing First until 2025, supporting people experiencing multiple disadvantage
• Providing councils with 3-year funding certainty through the Rough Sleeping Initiative, helping to build sustainable pathways out of rough sleeping
• £15 million social investment to deliver over 200 secure and affordable homes for people experiencing, or at risk of rough sleeping

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2. We will address unacceptable poor quality supported housing and increase supply, including through a new £200 million Single Homelessness Accommodation Programme

• £200 million investment into our new Single Homelessness Accommodation Programme (SHAP) to plug the gap in existing rough sleeping accommodation provision
• £300 million investment in the Adult Social Care Reform White Paper to connect housing with health and care, and boost the supply of supported housing including for people with a history or risk of rough sleeping
• Improving supported housing quality, including through the Supported Housing Improvement Programme with £20 million of funding across 2022-25
• Over £140 million investment to establish national standards and Ofsted regulation for providers accommodating children in, and leaving, care

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3. We will improve the support available to help people with experience of rough sleeping into employment, refreshing the jobcentre offer through best practice and networks of homelessness leads, and setting up a covenant with employers to increase job opportunities.

• Strengthening models of jobcentre support and partnerships to ensure people can develop their skills and find work
• Working with businesses to encourage employment of those experiencing rough sleeping through our newly launched employer covenant
• Improving identification through the Universal Credit system
• Funding for tailored employment interventions through the Rough Sleeping Initiative

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4. We will provide significant investment into drug and alcohol treatment to support people experiencing rough sleeping and improve mental health provision

• Expanding drug and alcohol treatment into a total of 83 local authorities with up to £186.5 million funding
• £53 million investment into housing support for people in drug and alcohol treatment
• Expanding and transforming mental health services for people who experience rough sleeping through the NHS long-term plan and wider £2.3 billion mental health funding
• Making sure the needs of those experiencing rough sleeping are taken into account in any future Mental Health and Wellbeing Plan

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Chapter 6: A transparent and joined-up system

This chapter provides an overview of our approach to ensuring a transparent and joined- up system – it includes:

• Case for action: what do we know about the importance of a transparent and joined-up system?
• Making a change: what is our ambition for a transparent and joined-up system?
• Acting now: what action will we take to achieve our ambition?

Case for action: What do we know?

1. To end rough sleeping and maximise the impact of the support available, we know that services need to work together in partnership. The pandemic response brought systems and partners closer together than ever before, seeing rough sleeping as a housing and health problem, facilitating closer partnerships with other parts of the system such as prisons.108

We know that these partnerships had a positive impact; for example, the combined systems approach to help those sleeping rough and experiencing multiple disadvantages during lockdown was reported to have assisted relations between partners and Housing First pilots. This was seen not only between those responsible for delivering Housing First, but across the field of those responsible for finding solutions for people experiencing multiple disadvantages. Better joined-up service provision and multi-agency collaboration was one of the factors credited to the success of the pandemic response – and we know we need to build on this in the long-term.

2. The need for system join-up is particularly acute when considering the needs of people facing multiple disadvantages. We estimate around 363,000 adults in England are experiencing multiple disadvantage. Evidence suggests that some services struggle to meet this amount of demand or that people can face barriers to accessing the services they need, such as being refused access to mental health services due to substance misuse. It also suggests service delivery is not always joined-up, meaning people often access services in crisis or not at all.

3. Joining-up the system is one issue, but then holding that system to account is another. We have set out that ending rough sleeping means when rough sleeping is “prevented wherever possible and, when it does happen, rough sleeping should be rare, brief and non-recurring”. Our vision is clear, but there are foundations that must be in place to enable the system to deliver: the right data that is publicly accessible so that areas can identify the specific action needed to drive performance, clear lines of accountability, a capable and skilled workforce, and a strong evidence base to inform decisions.

4. In order to achieve this, we must continue to improve our evidence base and data. We know that having timely, relevant data can influence policy changes and inform decisions at a national and local level. This data is also necessary for monitoring performance and progress. Although we have collected some of the world’s most sophisticated rough sleeping data since 2010, the pandemic highlighted the importance of timely and consistent data in delivering services and monitoring their impacts, and we want to build on this to support local authorities.

5. The final element is clear accountability structures, which go beyond performance monitoring and address what happens after performance is measured. It is vital the system works together to provide the right support to meet the varied needs of those who sleep rough, and that it is clear who is responsible for what. This is a whole of government strategy, and we want this collaborative approach matched by local delivery partners. We can set out what we expect nationally, but this also entails empowering local partners to take responsibility for improving elements of their delivery and finding the right ways of working to end rough sleeping sustainably in the long-term.

6. The benefits of enabling a transparent and joined-up system are clear and we know we must align all our efforts towards our shared goal if we want to end rough sleeping.

Making a change: What is our ambition?

7. To have improved systems so that local partners have the right data and evidence, clear accountability structures, a capable workforce who feel valued, and effective partnerships and services to end rough sleeping. To deliver a transparent and joined-up system our approach includes: using innovation to improve our evidence and data; driving collaboration to reliably measure the progress we are making; proportionate accountability mechanisms to make sure all of us are doing our part, including local political leaders, such as Mayors, and council leaders; and, support for the workforce to deliver essential services for people experiencing rough sleeping through enhanced partnership working.

8. Building on the excellent examples of collaboration up and down the country, this strategy will go further and lay the foundations for the system change required to end rough sleeping in the long-term by: rolling out a new data-led national framework for defining and monitoring an end to rough sleeping to drive local performance; publishing new, more regular information about rough sleeping to give a fuller picture of trends; over £14 million in total for a new Test and Learn Programme and systems wide evaluation to improve our understanding of what works; delivering £7.3 million to support the voluntary, community and frontline sectors; new guidance to ensure Integrated Care Partnerships take account of the needs of people sleeping rough in their areas; and embedding the learning from the Changing Futures programme.

Acting now: How will we achieve it?

To achieve this:

1) We will introduce a new national data- led framework to measure progress towards ending rough sleeping

a. Regular data publications and improvements

Data and transparency are core values to our democracy and a way for the public to hold central and local government and its partners to account. We regularly publish:

• Annual Rough Sleeping Snapshot Statistics: The annual rough sleeping snapshot provides information about the estimated number of people sleeping rough on a single night across England between 1 October and 30 November each year and some basic demographic details (age, gender, nationality). Although these statistics do not show the scale of rough sleeping over a year, they enable us to assess change over time reliably, which is important for understanding progress. The snapshot methodology has been in place since 2010 and remains our official and most robust measure of rough sleeping on a single night and has been adopted in many cities across the world. The figures are independently verified by Homeless Link and are published in line with the Code of Practice for Statistics.
• Quarterly Homelessness Statistics: This collection contains statistics on statutory homelessness, which is a reporting requirement of local authorities to provide data on people approaching local authorities for help with homelessness. This includes detailed data on activities undertaken by local authorities to help prevent or relieve homelessness and the outcomes of these activities. The data collected in this release shows total activity over the quarter except for data on temporary accommodation, which is a snapshot at the end of the quarter. We know there are several reasons why people experiencing rough sleeping are not consistently picked up in the Homelessness Case Level Information System (H-CLIC), including differences in time periods and methodologies, eligibility status and challenges with engagement during the assessment process and we are working to better understand this.
• Management Information: This year, we have gone further to ensure we have a larger range of data available for informing decisions and ensuring greater transparency, by publishing more detailed management information about the support for people sleeping rough and those at risk of sleeping rough. The first publication can be found here. This data collection began at the beginning of the pandemic, to ensure that vulnerable people most at risk of COVID-19 could be protected in the most effective way possible. We are grateful for the remarkable work and dedication of local authorities to collect, collate and share this information, which provides a more holistic picture of rough sleeping levels and is an important step towards driving better outcomes through increased data and transparency.
• Data Improvement: It is vital that alongside data publication we go further, gathering data to fully understand people’s experience of sleeping rough and their journeys through the system – as this will be crucial if we are to end rough sleeping for good. Therefore, we continue to improve the relevance of our regular rough sleeping management information while aiming to minimise the burdens on local authorities and undertake improvements. We are also looking at the role case-level data on rough sleeping might have in helping us to better understand the reasons why people experience rough sleeping, people’s needs and how we can ensure better outcomes. Going forward, creating a strong data infrastructure will accelerate good policy and better outcomes for people experiencing rough sleeping.

b. A phased national roll-out of a new data- led framework to measure national and local progress on ending rough sleeping

It is critical that we are able to measure progress, both at a local and national level, towards achieving our ambition to end rough sleeping. We already have a robust regime in place to monitor local performance – each area has an Ending Rough Sleeping Plan that outlines an area’s objectives and progress against delivery. As part of these plans, each area also has an operational target, setting ambitious aims to reduce the number of people sleeping rough on any given night. These plans and targets are monitored in collaboration with the local authority on a regular basis, with DLUHC’s expert homelessness and rough sleeping advisers providing bespoke support to local areas to help them achieve their goals.

However, we recognise that there is more we can do to demonstrate to the public the progress we are making to end rough sleeping – which is why we have been working with the Centre for Homelessness Impact to develop a national data-led framework to track progress towards our vision of ensuring that rough sleeping is prevented wherever possible, and where it cannot be prevented, is a rare, brief and non-recurring experience. Not only will this framework help to align all partners towards our shared vision and its associated outcomes, but it will act as a mechanism to track our progress nationally and locally, whilst being sufficiently flexible, so that the framework is still relevant to all local areas and their particular context.

In March 2022, we publicly set out our vision for ending rough sleeping – that rough sleeping should be “prevented wherever possible and, when it does happen, rough sleeping should be rare, brief and non-recurring”. Following extensive testing with early adopters (Greater Manchester, Greater London, Newcastle, West Midlands, and Bournemouth Christchurch and Poole), we have now developed core indicators which will underpin our shared vision. These are designed to support each element of the vision – prevention, rare, brief and non-recurring – and work has been progressing at pace to understand the data and systems required within local authorities to monitor these indicators. The core indicators can be found in Annex A. We are working with the early adopters to understand what is needed for all local authorities across England to adopt this framework, and to be able to use the framework to drive performance by shining a light on progress across a range of measures. Within the next phase of this work, we will collectively be refining a set of additional indicators that are wider than the core set of indicators and more tailored to local contexts, enabling local authorities to choose further indicators to monitor which are applicable to their area.

This is the first time we have brought together evidence experts on what works, alongside local authorities with strategic and frontline delivery experience, to create alignment, agreement on shared outcomes and a consistent, robust way of tracking progress in a consistent manner across the country. This demonstrates our commitment to collective agreement and a collaborative approach, enabling the whole system to use this framework for understanding our progress towards achieving our shared vision.

2) We will ensure robust but flexible accountability structures are in place

Having the right data in place is essential, but without clear and robust accountability mechanisms and local leadership (such as Mayors and council leaders), we will not see the systemic change we know we need to end rough sleeping. We are committed to working with local areas to understand what is right for each local area and know that a number of areas are already making great progress to put in place innovative solutions. Our vision for what robust, but flexible, accountability arrangements should look like is set out below. We will continue to work with partners to develop our shared approach.

• At the local level:

We expect local authorities, in collaboration with local partners, to take the lead in accountability for local rough sleeping outcomes. It is clear that there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach and that partners at the local level want the flexibility to make local arrangements. This has been a strong theme of conversations with various local stakeholders and outcomes of previous consultations on accountability. We have considered formal structures in the past, such as Homelessness Reduction Boards, and consulted on their use and wider accountability measures through the 2019 Tackling Homelessness Together consultation. However, responses were mixed and suggest that partners are looking for something less prescriptive and more tailored to local need. It is important to have consistency across local areas when understanding how we are achieving our goal to end rough sleeping, but the ways in which this responsibility is managed can differ. Clearly, when we make decisions about funding to local areas, the strength and robustness of local accountability arrangements play a vital role.

There are some great examples of existing local solutions that can be learned from. We have seen strong lines of accountability created with the leadership of regional Mayors who ensure buy-in, partnership working and foster an environment for driving improvements. For example, the West Midlands have pioneered a Commitment to Collaborate Toolkit, supported by Mayor Andy Street, driving practical actions across the sector and encouraging partnerships to tackle broader systemic issues around prevention. Mayor Andy Burnham’s ‘A Bed Every Night’ (ABEN) scheme is another key example of a joined-up and holistic local solution aimed at ending rough sleeping across the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, with visible leadership provided by the Mayor. This leadership and partnership working is demonstrated in the case studies below.

Elsewhere, Creative Solutions Groups and Panels, which have been established in areas such as in South Gloucestershire Council, allow for collaboration between services, including statutory and voluntary partners to better understand individual rough sleeping cases. They make decisions and recommend actions to help individuals and families with complex needs that are not met through a standard service response. Taking a more creative and strategic approach, they identify and unblock areas of the system that are problematic to help tailor services and systems that meet individual need. These groups and panels are unique in that their members have the authority and flexibility to direct appropriate resources and deliver unique solutions.

Finally, we are supporting performance locally through a range of accountability tools. This includes support from DLUHC’s rough sleeping adviser team, working hand in hand with local areas to improve their delivery, as well as publishing more data on rough sleeping on a regular basis to help drive performance improvements at the local level and increase public scrutiny. An interactive dashboard has been published to display the data to allow comparisons to be drawn between areas and to help instigate local discussions and inform decision making. DLUHC is also establishing the Office for Local Government (OfLoG), a new body focused on data, transparency, and evidence to improve understanding of local service delivery, performance, and leadership at the local level. This will support our ambition to end rough sleeping through monitoring local authority performance and delivery of key services across local government priorities, including rough sleeping, drug and alcohol treatment, youth services, and housing supply. OfLoG will publish comparable metrics for each local authority, which will support local leaders in decision-making; allow central government to hold local authorities to account; and help local partners better understand what is happening in their area. For rough sleeping, all data will be aligned with our new data-led framework.

• At the national level

To support all partners at a local level, government must continue to set the expectation for what we are collectively trying to achieve at a national level, for instance through the new data framework. This cross-government strategy, led by Ministers with clear commitments from across departments, sets out our collective vision and how we are leading the change needed to create a long-term system change. We encourage open communication between local partners and central government partners, such as through rough sleeping advisers and the various stakeholder groups we oversee, so that nationally we are addressing issues relevant to local areas.

We will ensure this strategy lays the foundations for long-term system change by asking the Rough Sleeping Advisory Panel to oversee delivery and provide an annual update to government to track progress in achieving our vision.

3) We will improve our evidence base and understanding of which interventions work to end rough sleeping

a. £2.2 million investment into an unprecedented systems-wide evaluation (subject to feasibility) and new data-linking

If we want to ensure that we deliver a system that ends rough sleeping, we need to better understand how the whole system works, where it drives good outcomes and where it fails. This is why we are investing £2.2 million into an evaluation to understand how local services work and interact across the homelessness and rough sleeping system and the wider public sector, including their impact and value for money of public funding. It will consider the impact of different government-wide interventions on homelessness and rough sleeping and provide the context needed to better understand the effectiveness of delivery at both the system and local level, including how people enter and move through the system and interact with services. This work is vital to understand what constitutes effective service delivery, which interventions are effective and provide value for money, and where to best target resources to effectively prevent and intervene in rough sleeping.

In order to establish the best methodological approach for the main study and assess the feasibility of establishing impact and value for money, we are procuring a feasibility study in the first stage of the work. We expect the feasibility study to deliver by March 2023. The tender for the full evaluation is expected to open in Spring 2023 with interim reports by Spring 2024 and final reports by Spring 2025. We intend to publish interim findings and final reports of findings to enable central and local decision makers and the sector to utilise the information and potentially make changes to the way services are delivered to achieve better outcomes.

Alongside this, the Better Outcomes through Linked Data (BOLD) programme is leading the way in improving the integration of government data in England and Wales. This data-linking programme is led by multiple government departments (e.g., DHSC and MoJ) and includes a homelessness project to better understand why some people repeatedly become homeless, which services are most effective in preventing prison leavers from becoming homeless (and thereby decreasing their chances of reoffending), and what role drug treatment services can play in preventing homelessness. This will be done by linking data, including data from the statutory homelessness system, with data held across central government and gives us the opportunity to drive better outcomes for people experiencing rough sleeping.

This will build on, and be complimentary to, the ongoing system level evaluation of the Changing Futures programme, which is focusing on what works at the local system level to improve outcomes for people experiencing multiple disadvantage including homelessness and rough sleeping. (For more detail on changing futures, see Changing Futures policy below).

b. Piloting innovative approaches to ending rough sleeping through a £12 million Test and Learn programme

We will only end rough sleeping if we continue to improve our understanding of the problem and remain open to testing bold and innovative solutions through an evidence-based approach. This is why our investment into a system wide evaluation will be supported by a £12m Test and Learn programme. Multiple pilots and trials will be set up to test interventions, in close collaboration with service providers. This investment will enable local areas and services to trial and evaluate a range of projects, and improve the evidence base of what works, for whom and how. The findings will provide robust evidence of impact on a range of outcomes and will inform future decision-making.

c. Embedding the voices of people with lived experiences into our policy making

People with experience of rough sleeping have a unique perspective on the complexity of the drivers and the circumstances that lead to someone sleeping rough and the impact that has on people’s lives. They also have first-hand experience of navigating the support available, including the barriers to coming off the streets and building a more stable life. We are committed to incorporating learning from people with lived experience to ensure individual’s needs are put at the heart of our policy-making and drive the delivery of policies and programmes across government. To deliver this we will develop a new advisory group made up of people with lived experience who will be in place to provide regular advice and to consult on our programme of work.

4) We will support the voluntary, community and faith sectors workforce to play their part alongside other delivery partners

We want the rough sleeping and homelessness sectors to attract the best possible people and be places where people can build successful and fulfilling careers. While the pandemic has enabled us to deliver real and important change for people who sleep rough, we know that this was a hugely challenging time for our workforce. However, we are clear that without them we cannot deliver our vision to end rough sleeping. We will continue to work closely with the sector to understand the needs of the fantastic people who work to support people who are homeless or sleep rough and ensure their needs are built into our future funding and policy decisions.

a. £7.3 million investment into increasing the capacity and capability and partnership of the workforce

The tens of thousands of passionate, dedicated and selfless people that work and volunteer with people who are homeless or sleep rough make a real difference to people’s lives at a time of vulnerability. We recognise the important work done every day by local authorities and the voluntary, community and faith sectors and we are grateful for their shared efforts and vision to bring an end to rough sleeping. We need to ensure that this workforce remains resourced, capable and collaborates effectively across organisational boundaries to deliver the best support to those who need it. To achieve this, we are investing £7.3 million over the next 3 years to deliver a range of initiatives, including:

• Shelter will provide an effective programme of quality homelessness and housing training, as well as information resources and training for the sector to help build skills and knowledge of frontline staff and volunteers in England.
• Shelter will also provide a specialist advice service to support frontline workers resolve individual cases. The specialist advice team will deliver housing, homelessness and welfare benefits advice via telephone, webchat and digital tools, to frontline staff. This service will be for professional and volunteer use only and it will not deliver advice directly to the general public or people who are at risk of, or are experiencing, rough sleeping.
• Homeless Link will develop and enable stronger local strategic partnerships by facilitating and supporting joint working between the voluntary, community and faith sectors, local public bodies, and local authorities to tackle local homelessness challenges – using a partnership approach to address barriers in local systems.
• Housing Justice will provide training and best practice support for the national night shelter network, offering accreditation for community organisations and shelters. Support will be offered to increase capabilities and links to statutory services and faith sectors.

Much of this builds on existing partnerships with leading sector organisations, such as Homeless Link, Housing Justice, Shelter and St Basils, that the government has supported in recent years – which is why we are confident that this further investment will continue to support the capacity and capability of the sector to deliver on our shared aim to end rough sleeping.

b. Promoting best practice for social workers and social care staff

Social workers and social care staff play a hugely valuable role in supporting those that are experiencing homelessness and rough sleeping – and we are grateful for their time, skill and dedication, along with all others that support this work. As part of the Adult Social Care White Paper, People at the Heart of Care, DHSC announced £500 million to fund a professionalisation programme for the adult social care workforce. As part of this, the Chief Social Worker’s office has committed to promote best practice guidance for engaging, assessing and providing support to someone experiencing homelessness including rough sleeping – to ensure that social workers and social care staff are empowered to deliver the highest-quality care and, in turn, improving the experience and outcomes for those people in need.

5) We will improve how different services work together for people sleeping rough, particularly people facing multiple disadvantage, including supporting partners within the new Integrated Care System to develop joined-up local strategies that bring together housing, homelessness and healthcare

a. Guidance to the health and care system to improve integration of services and outcomes for those experiencing homelessness and rough sleeping alongside other challenges

We aspire to deliver a joined-up health and care system that meets the needs of all those who use it – built on a foundation of integration and innovation, working together to improve health and social care for all. At the heart of this is ensuring that people with experiences of homelessness including rough sleeping receive integrated and trauma-informed care to help the prevention of, and recovery from, rough sleeping. To enable this:

i. Integrated Care Systems:

The Health and Care Act 2022 included provisions to fundamentally shift the way in which health services are commissioned and major changes in how health and care systems collaborate – ensuring integration and partnership is at the core of how services operate. This is why we have ensured that Integrated Care Strategy guidance considers the needs of people experiencing homelessness, including people sleeping rough. The guidance recommends that homelessness services should be engaged by Integrated Care Partnerships (ICPs) when developing the strategy that will inform local commissioning decisions made by Integrated Care Boards and upper tier local authorities. This guidance also includes housing and homelessness services, as examples of health-related services that could be better integrated with the health and care sector. The guidance champions co-production.

Additionally, new guidance for Health and Wellbeing Boards will also reference the needs of people experiencing homelessness and rough sleeping.

ii. Duty to Cooperate (in order to secure and advance health and welfare):

Co-operation is central to improving the health and wellbeing of people sleeping rough. Under Section 82 of the NHS Act 2006, NHS bodies and local authorities have a statutory duty to co-operate to secure and advance the health and welfare of people in their local area. In order to give greater clarity about what this duty means in practice, the Health and Care Act 2022 provides a power for statutory guidance to be issued on what this co-operation should entail and what NHS bodies and local authorities are required to have regard to when commissioning services. We have, therefore, committed to publish Duty to Cooperate Guidance on Inclusion Health, which will include people experiencing homelessness, including rough sleeping.

This guidance will help foster unprecedented levels of partnership – with the needs of people sleeping rough at the centre of ways of working across the system.

iii. Safeguarding Adult Boards:

Rough sleeping and multiple disadvantage is a safeguarding issue. The Care Act 2014 requires each local authority to set up a Safeguarding Adults Board (SAB) in order to provide assurance that local safeguarding arrangements and partners are acting to help and protect adults with care and support needs who they suspect are at risk of abuse or neglect (including self-neglect). In line with the recommendations of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines, DLUHC and DHSC are strongly recommending that every Safeguarding Adult Board has a named member advocating for people sleeping rough, who we know often experience the most severe disadvantage and multiple and complex needs. SABs should also ensure, in their partnerships with housing teams, that there is clear accountability for people sleeping rough.

This should include joint working between the SAB and the Director for Housing, who has ultimate responsibility for people experiencing homelessness. Integration of health, care and housing services for people sleeping rough is a priority for DLUHC and DHSC Ministers, which is why they will be writing to local authorities to reiterate the importance of this and set out the expectations of Safeguarding Adult Board in supporting people sleeping rough.

b. Embedding learning from the trailblazing £64 million Changing Futures programme – piloting improved join-up and implementation of person-centred services in 15 local partnerships

Thanks to the pioneering and innovative research of our partners at the MEAM (Making Every Adult Matter) Coalition and The National Lottery Community Fund through their Fulfilling Lives programme, we have a rich understanding of some of the challenges faced by people experiencing multiple disadvantage and what works in response. Evaluation of both programmes has found significant reductions to rough sleeping and increased housing stability among beneficiaries alongside a range of other positive outcomes. This is why government and the National Lottery Community Fund are investing £64 million into the Changing Futures programme between 2019/20 and 2023/24, to test how to join-up and implement a person- centred approach, in local areas and across government, to improve outcomes for adults experiencing multiple disadvantage. The programme is funding locally led pilots in 15 areas covering 34 top-tier local authority areas and we are undertaking a robust evaluation at individual, service and system levels with the first report due in September 2022. Key features include:

• Increased strategic collaboration and multi-agency working amongst local partners: In order to deliver co-ordinated and flexible front line services, Changing Futures areas are developing strong partnership working at operational and strategic levels, with representatives including local authority services (including homelessness and housing support, public health and adult social care), strategic NHS partners, police, Combatting Drugs Partnerships, National Probation Service, Jobcentre Plus and voluntary, community and social sector partners. Most are building on or connecting into existing or new multi-agency governance arrangements, such as Health and Wellbeing Boards and Integrated Care Partnerships. (See further detail on this above).
• Taking a strategic approach to trusting relationships and person-centred support: People experiencing multiple disadvantage, as well as those providing support, identify a trusting relationship as the foundation for providing effective support. As part of the Changing Futures programme, areas offer flexible, person-centred and long-term support, delivered and co-ordinated through dedicated key workers with small caseloads and multi-disciplinary teams of specialists. Support stays with people as their circumstances change, including changes in housing situation, hospital admissions and prison sentences.
• Roles for people with lived experience: Shared experience between a worker and client can support the development of trusting relationships, as well as providing a positive role model and proof that recovery is possible. For similar reasons, lived experience is also emphasised as valuable in delivering gender-informed and relational approaches. Co-design of services with people with lived experiences also helps to challenge assumptions and identify barriers and helps change services and the system to work better for people experiencing multiple disadvantage. The National Expert Citizens Group (NECG) have been key partners in the design and development of the Changing Futures programme since its inception. Members of the NECG represent people who have experienced a combination of homelessness, contact with the criminal justice system, mental health problems, and alcohol or substance use.

The government is committed to ongoing learning alongside local Changing Futures partnerships, including people with personal experience of multiple disadvantage, throughout the delivery and evaluation of the programme.

We will embed the lessons learned to help revolutionise our ways of working and help people facing multiple challenges to improve their lives.

c. Consolidating funding streams

In recent years, particularly as a result of the pandemic, government has been responding quickly to bring forward a range of funding streams to help local authorities deliver their priorities on rough sleeping. Whilst these funding streams have been vital, and the pace necessary, we recognise that it can be challenging and burdensome for local areas to manage a range of different funds. We are clear that funding should be delivered as efficiently as possible to enable local authorities to deliver their overarching strategies and ensure their time is best spent delivering services to the people that need them. As our programme has matured, we have taken opportunities to align funding streams in order to find efficiencies. We have sought to align funding streams as far as possible to reduce administrative burdens – for example, combining the new burdens funding for domestic abuse into the Homelessness Prevention Grant rather than having a separate funding stream and folding Housing First funding into the Rough Sleeping Initiative 2022-25. We are committed to further streamlining where possible.

Case study: The system in action

Changing Futures Programme, Lancashire

Coordinated across Lancashire (including Blackburn with Darwen and Blackpool), the Changing Futures approach works through 4 Localities, closely aligned to the Integrated Care System footprints and has established new Enhanced Service Hubs. These bring key services including housing support, substance misuse, adult social care, probation, police, health, and voluntary sector together around the person, providing flexible and intensive ‘whole person’ support to help people to stabilise their lives and start building towards recovery. Monthly locality strategic meetings provide oversight and problem-solving for these hubs to help the different agencies work effectively together and address barriers to support that emerge, while these in turn feed delivery assurance, learning and priorities up to a Lancashire-wide Changing Futures Lancashire Board which is overseeing implementation at individual and service level. A Multiple Deprivation Board coordinated through Integrated Care System (ICS) arrangements is also being established to review learning from the programme and system change priorities.

Steve’s Experience With Changing Futures Programme, Lancashire

Arriving in Blackburn with no local connection Steve started sleeping rough and had regular contact with the Police and Community Safety due to anti-social behaviour. His drug and alcohol use spiralled and there were numerous incidents in which he was beaten up and robbed whilst rough sleeping.

Changing Futures workers contacted Steve daily, building a relationship and engagement by focusing on Steve’s priorities. At Steve’s request the navigator met him daily to go to the bank to help with budgeting.

Steve is now feeling more positive, vastly reduced his drug use and has become more responsible for his own finances. He has been accepted into supportive living accommodation and attends Lancashire Users Forum with his mentor where he has met other people in recovery. This sparked an interest in going to rehab for the first time. He hopes to volunteer in the future and wants to be considered as a peer mentor when he is free from substances.

Andy Burnham, Mayor Of Greater Manchester

Since 2017 we have made significant progress towards our goal of ending the need for rough sleeping in Greater Manchester. This has only been possible thanks to our ground-breaking partnership approach across the public, private and voluntary sector. The year-on-year reductions we have seen are the result of a dedicated community infrastructure that underpins a whole-system response to rough sleeping, including:

• Greater Manchester Homelessness Action Network: A powerful coalition of people who want to see an end to homelessness, coming together to solve problems, pool resources and develop cohesive strategies to end homelessness across all sectors and lived experiences.
• Locality Homelessness Partnerships: Our Borough Council colleagues work closely with the voluntary sector and lived experience voices to develop bespoke local responses to rough sleeping.
• Political Leadership: With a continued clear manifesto commitment and mandate to end homelessness across the city-region.
• Whole-systems Thinking: Working across sectors to galvanise support to end homelessness across a range of policy areas and contexts (e.g. health, criminal justice etc.).
• Doing Things Differently: Developing new interventions for people, from immediate responses such as A Bed Every Night, through to longer term interventions including Greater Manchester Housing First, and learning from what works.
• Collective Accountability: Bringing together voices from across sectors and backgrounds to provide whole-system oversight of our efforts to end homelessness through GM Homelessness Programme Board, chaired by the Mayor of Greater Manchester.

These key pillars have made it possible to produce an effective and collective emergency response to the immediate rough sleeping crisis, exemplified by our A Bed Every Night model, and subsequently the Everyone In response to Covid-19. However, we know that prevention is far more effective than cure in the long run. That’s why we co-produced the first ever Greater Manchester Homelessness Prevention Strategy with people from across these networks, through honest conversations about how we can end all forms of homelessness in Greater Manchester, and how far we still have to go to make it a reality.

Andy Street, Mayor Of The West Midlands

The WMCA Homelessness Taskforce was set up by the Mayor of the West Midlands in 2017, and embedded into the mainstream work of the WMCA in 2019, with a commitment to bring together organisations, people and resources to ‘design out homelessness’ in the West Midlands. The Homelessness Taskforce comprises all 7 constituent local authorities, key public sector agencies, voluntary and community sector organisations and representation from the business community. In addition, there is a Members Advisory Group made up of Cabinet Members with responsibility for homelessness from each of the 7 constituent authorities, bolstering political leadership and accountability.

In designing out homelessness, the Taskforce is committed to identifying and addressing gaps in strategies, policies, procedures, laws, structures, systems and relationships that either cause or fail to prevent homelessness. It recognises that homelessness takes many forms and is a complex mix of personal and wider structural factors, such as health, employment, relationships and housing. Using the Positive Pathway model, the Taskforce have worked creatively with partners, sharing learning, resources and good practice to prevent and reduce rough sleeping across the region. As early adopters we are working to ensure that rough sleeping is prevented, wherever possible, through effective universal and targeted prevention, so it is rare, and where it occurs it is brief and non-recurring.

Summary of chapter 6 summary – a transparent and joined-up system

1. We will introduce a new national data-led framework to measure progress towards ending rough sleeping

• Regular data publications and improvements
• A phased national roll-out of a new data-led framework to measure national and local progress on ending rough sleeping

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2. We will ensure robust but flexible accountability structures are in place

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3. We will improve our evidence base and understanding of what works to end rough sleeping

• £2.2 million investment into an unprecedented systems-wide evaluation (subject to feasibility) and new data-linking
• Piloting innovative approaches to ending rough sleeping through a £12 million Test and Learn programme
• Embedding the voices of people with lived experiences into our policy making

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4. We will support the voluntary, community and faith sector workforce to play their part alongside other delivery partners

• £7.3 million investment into increasing the capacity and capability and partnership of the workforce
• Promoting best practice for social workers and social care staff

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5. We will improve how different services work together for people sleeping rough, particularly people facing multiple disadvantage, including supporting partners within the new Integrated Care Systems to develop joined-up local strategies that bring together housing, homelessness and healthcare

• Guidance to the health and care system to improve integration of services and outcomes for those experiencing homelessness and rough sleeping alongside other challenges
  • Integrated Care Systems
  • Duty to Cooperate (in order to secure and advance health and welfare)
  • Safeguarding Adult Boards
• Embedding learning from the trailblazing £64 million Changing Futures programme – piloting improved join-up and implementation of person-centred services in 15 local partnerships
• Consolidating funding streams

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Annexes

Annex A: Data-led framework indicators

Prevent

P.1 – Number of new people sleeping out (an absolute figure, as a rate per 100,000 population, a proportion of all people sleeping rough)

P.2 – People discharged from institutions with no settled accommodation identified

Rare

R.1 – The number of people sleeping out on a single night, expressed as: an absolute figure, as a rate per 100,000 population

Brief

B.1 – The length of time between the first time someone is identified sleeping rough and moving into ‘off the streets’ accommodation

B.2 – The length of time between a person’s first contact with outreach services and moving into ‘long-term’ accommodation

Non-Recurring

NR.1 – The number of ‘returners’ of people seen sleeping out again after being successfully supported into accommodation, expressed as: an absolute number, a proportion of the number of people who are successfully supported into accommodation

NR.2 – The number of people experiencing ‘long-term’ rough sleeping (an absolute figure, as a rate per 100,000 population, a proportion of all people sleeping rough)

Annex B: Summary of commitments and policies

Summary of policies: Rough Sleeping Strategy

Outcome: Prevention

Commitment	Policy	Department
1) We will increase affordability and security of housing	a) Increasing the amount of social housing available, including £11.5 billion investment into our Affordable Homes Programme	DLUHC
	b) Delivering a fairer Private Rented Sector	DLUHC
	c) Maintaining financial support towards housing costs for those on low income through Housing Benefit and Universal Credit - Supporting people who have experienced homelessness including rough sleeping by maintaining the shared accommodation rate exemption - Supporting people who need further financial assistance with their housing costs through Discretionary Housing Payments. - Strengthening models of jobcentre support and partnerships to ensure people can get the benefits to which they are entitled	DWP
2) We will empower local authorities to better prevent rough sleeping – including fully embedding the landmark Homelessness Reduction Act 2017	a) Continuing to support local authorities to embed the Homelessness Reduction Act	DLUHC
	b) Funding £316 million Homelessness Prevention Grant in 2022/23	DLUHC
3. We will commit to working with stakeholders from local authorities and the service delivery sector to establish an operational risk assessment tool to assist with prevention of rough sleeping		DLUHC
4. We will support our ambition that no -one is released from a public institution to the streets through the following commitments:
4.1 No-one should leave prison homeless or to sleep rough	a) National roll-out of 12 weeks of transitional accommodation upon release Continue expansion for Approved Premises for high risk offenders Introduce legislation to reduce numbers of prisoners released on Fridays to help with better access to essential services Introduce resettlement passports, to bring together key information and services to support successful resettlement into the community	MoJ
	b) Employing more Housing Specialists to improve accommodation pathways and partnership with local authorities	DLUHC MoJ
	c) Taking a preventative approach, based on individual circumstances, through regional probation Homelessness Prevention Teams	MoJ
	d) Targeting welfare support for people preparing to leave prison	DWP
	e) New multi-year funding to help secure private rented accommodation for people leaving prison	DLUHC
4.2 Young people leaving care will receive the support they need to secure and maintain suitable accommodation	a) £3.2 million investment for more specialist personal advisers in 2022/23, to provide individual support for young people leaving care at risk of homelessness or rough sleeping	DfE
	b) £99.8 million funding over the next 3 years into ‘Staying Put’, to enable young people to remain with their former foster families for longer	DfE
	c) £36 million funding over the next 3 years to expand ‘Staying Close’, providing extra support for young people leaving children’s homes	DfE
	d) Working with local authorities to share best practice on supporting young people leaving care at risk of rough sleeping	DfE DLUHC
	e) Consideration of the recommendations in the report published by independent review of children’s social care, as part of the government’s broader response to challenges in the care system	DfE DLUHC
	f) Targeting welfare support for young people leaving care	DWP
4.3 No-one should be discharged from hospital to the streets	a) Adopting learning from the Out of Hospital Care Programme to reduce the risk of people leaving hospital for the streets	DHSC
4.4 No-one who has served in the UK Armed Forces should face the need to sleep rough	a) Providing high priority access for social housing and temporary accommodation	DLUHC OVA MoD
	b) Continuing to waive local connection requirements for veterans	DLUHC
	c) Providing specialist housing support for those leaving the Armed Forces	OVA MoD
	d) Targeting welfare support for veterans	DWP
4.5 We will review the impact of the new asylum dispersal system on homelessness and rough sleeping	a) Consulting local authorities on the long-term reform of the asylum dispersal system	DLUHC HO
5. We will support recovery to prevent rough sleeping recurring

Outcome: Intervention

Commitment	Policy	Department
1. We will extend investment into co- ordinated local rough sleeping services and ensure tailored support to meet individual needs, including through the £500 million Rough Sleeping Initiative 2022-25 and the £10 million Night Shelter Transformation Fund to increase provision of quality single-room provision within the night shelter sector	a) Up to £500 million multi-year investment into our flagship Rough Sleeping Initiative 2022-25	DLUHC
	b) Embedding guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to put the person at the centre of support	DLUHC DHSC
	c) Tailoring interventions to ensure that support meets people’s specific needs - People “living on the streets” and experiencing multiple disadvantage - Women - Victims of domestic abuse and sexual violence - LGBT - Young People - Victims of modern slavery	Relevant Departments
	d) Transforming voluntary and community provision with £10 million investment over the next 3 years, including to encourage a move towards quality single-room provision	DLUHC
	e) Continuing to protect the population from COVID-19	DLUHC DHSC
2. We will build on our ‘exhaust all options’ approach with non-UK nationals sleeping rough to make sure those who have restricted eligibility for public funds have a clear pathway off the streets	a) Reforming the Rough Sleeping Support Service to help swiftly clarify and resolve the immigration status of non-UK nationals who are sleeping rough	HO
	b) Introducing an offer of tailored support for those that wish to return to their home country voluntarily	HO DLUHC
3. We will provide local authorities, police and other agencies with the tools they need to work effectively together to address rough sleeping, protect the public and make communities feel safe for all	a) Support better multi-agency working between local authorities, the police and other enforcement agencies through guidance and sharing of best practice to address rough sleeping, protect the public and make communities safe for all	HO DLUHC
	b) Repeal the outdated Vagrancy Act whilst ensuring the police, local authorities and other agencies have the powers and tools to respond effectively to begging, support vulnerable individuals and help communities feel safer	DLUHC
4. We will make it easier for the public to play their part in supporting people sleeping rough	a) Continued investment to improve the way in which the public can make referrals when they see a person sleeping rough	DLUHC
	b) Championing and sharing best practice led by the rail sector	DfT

Outcome: Recovery

Commitment	Policy	Department
1. We will support both housing-led approaches and Housing First, and will make sure specialist homes are in place for people experiencing rough sleeping	a) 6,000 longer term homes through our flagship Rough Sleeping Accommodation Programme	DLUHC
	b) Extending Housing First until 2025, supporting people experiencing multiple disadvantage	DLUHC
	c) Providing councils with 3-year funding certainty through the Rough Sleeping Initiative, helping to build sustainable pathways out of rough sleeping	DLUHC
	d) £15 million social investment to deliver over 200 secure and affordable homes for people experiencing rough sleeping or are at risk of rough sleeping	DLUHC
2. We will address unacceptable poor quality supported housing and increase supply, including through a new £200 million Single Homelessness Accommodation Programme	a) £200 million investment into our new Single Homelessness Accommodation Programme (SHAP) to plug the gap in existing rough sleeping accommodation provision	DLUHC
	b) £300 million investment in the Adult Social Care Reform White Paper to connect housing with health and care, and boost the supply of supported housing including for people with a history or risk of rough sleeping	DHSC
	c) Improving supported housing quality through the Supported Housing Improvement Programme with £20 million of funding across 2022-25	DLUHC
	d) Over £140 million investment to establish national standards and Ofsted regulation for providers accommodating children in, and leaving, care	DfE
3. We will improve the support available to help people with experience of rough sleeping into employment, refreshing the jobcentre offer through best practice and networks of homelessness leads and setting up a covenant with employers to support job opportunities	a) Strengthening models of jobcentre support and partnerships to ensure people can develop their skills and find work	DWP
	b) Working with businesses to encourage employment of those experiencing rough sleeping through our newly launched employer covenant	DWP
	c) Improving identification through the Universal Credit system	DWP
	d) Funding for tailored employment interventions through the Rough Sleeping Initiative	DLUHC
4. We will provide significant investment into drug and alcohol treatment to support people experiencing rough sleeping and improve mental health provision	a) Expanding drug and alcohol treatment into a total of 83 local authorities through the £186.5 million funding	DHSC DLUHC
	b) £53 million investment into housing support for people in drug and alcohol treatment	DHSC HO DLUHC
	c) Expanding and transforming mental health services for people who experience rough sleeping through the NHS long-term plan and wider £2.3 billion mental health funding	DHSC
	d) Making sure the needs of those experiencing rough sleeping are taken into account in any future Mental Health and Wellbeing Plan	DHSC

Outcome: Transparent and joined-up system

Commitment	Policy	Department
1. We will introduce a new national data-led framework to measure progress towards ending rough sleeping	a) Regular data publications and improvements	DLUHC
	b) A phased national roll-out of a new data-led framework to measure national and local progress on ending rough sleeping	DLUHC
2. We will ensure robust but flexible accountability structures are in place		DLUHC
3. We will improve our evidence-base and understanding of what works to end rough sleeping	a) £2.2 million investment into an unprecedented systems-wide evaluation and (subject to feasibility) new data-linking	DLUHC
	b) Piloting innovative approaches to ending rough sleeping through a £12 million Test and Learn Programme	DLUHC
	c) Embedding the voices of people with lived experiences into our policy making
4. We will support the voluntary, community and faith sector workforce to play their part alongside other delivery partners	a) £7.3 million investment into increasing the capacity and capability and partnership of the workforce	DLUHC
	b) Promoting best practice for social workers and social care staff	DHSC
5. We will improve how different services work together for people sleeping rough, particularly people facing multiple disadvantage, including supporting partners within the new Integrated Care System to develop joined- up local strategies that bring together housing, homelessness and healthcare	a) Guidance to the health and care system to improve integration of services and outcomes for those experiencing homelessness and rough sleeping alongside other challenges - Integrated Care Systems - Duty to Cooperate (in order to secure and advance health and welfare) - Safeguarding Adult Boards	DHSC
	b) Embedding learning from the trailblazing £64 million Changing Futures Programme – piloting improved join-up and implementation of person- centred services in 15 local partnerships	DHSC
	c) Consolidating funding streams	DLUHC

Annex C: Glossary

Asylum Dispersal: the process by which the Home Office moves asylum seekers to specified local authority areas across the UK while their application for asylum is processed.

Asylum Seeker: an individual who has left their country, is seeking protection from persecution and serious human rights violations in another country and is yet to receive a decision on their claim for asylum. As a distinction, a ‘Refugee’ is an asylum seeker whose claim has been successful and a ‘failed asylum seeker’ is the status given to an applicant whose claim for asylum has been refused and any subsequent appeals have been unsuccessful.

Best Practice: evidence-based standards, actions or procedures that are deemed effective and may assist other organisations of individuals facing similar circumstances and aims.

Centre for Homelessness Impact: an independent ‘What Works Centre’, dedicated to improving the lives of people experiencing homelessness by advancing the supply and use of data and evidence tailored to the needs of decision-makers.

CHAIN: The Combined Homelessness and Information Network (CHAIN) is a multi-agency database recording information about people seen rough sleeping by outreach teams in London. CHAIN is commissioned and funded by the Greater London Authority. CHAIN’s data is not verified by DLUHC, however it offers important intelligence about demographics, trends and emerging needs within the rough sleeping population in London.

Changing Futures: a £64 million programme, funded by government and the National Lottery Community Fund, between 2019/20 and 2023/24, to test how to better join-up services in local areas and across government, to improve outcomes for adults experiencing multiple disadvantage. The programme is funding locally led pilots in 15 areas covering 34 top tier local authority areas.

Corporate Parenting: the collective responsibility of the local authority, elected members, employees, and partner agencies, for providing the best possible care and safeguarding for the children who are looked after by local authorities.

Covenant: a commitment by organisations to undertake certain activities, or work in line with certain principles, in order to support a particular cause. Examples in the strategy include: the Care Leavers Covenant, which is in place to support care leavers to improve their transition from care to adulthood. The principle behind the Care Leaver Covenant is to encourage organisations across wider society – private, voluntary and public sector – to sign and make a commitment to offer employment opportunities, services, and tailored support to young people leaving care; and the new employer covenant, which will similarly be a rallying call to support those who have experiences of rough sleeping into employment.

Data-Linking: bringing together data from different sources, including data held by different organisations, to achieve deeper insights.

DfE: Department for Education

DfT: Department for Transport

DHSC: Department of Health and Social Care

DLUHC: Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities

DWP: Department for Work and Pensions

End of Parliament: the period at which parliament formally becomes dissolved before the next scheduled general election. The next end of Parliament will be in 2024.

HO: Home Office

Homelessness: legally, a person is considered homeless if they do not have accommodation that they have a legal right to occupy, which is accessible and physically available to them (and their household) or which it would be reasonable for them to continue to live in. Rough sleeping is one form of homelessness.

Housing Association: a non-profit organisation set up to provide affordable homes for those in need.

Housing-Led: an approach that prioritises the provision of stable accommodation to those experiencing homelessness and rough sleeping, over the requirement that an individual first addresses any other support needs that they have.

Intentional Homelessness: a circumstance in which an individual knowingly and deliberately does, or fails to do, something that causes them to lose their home, when they could have reasonably continued to occupy the accommodation available to them.

Jobcentre: jobcentres help people move from benefits into work and help employers advertise jobs. They also deal with benefits for people who are unemployed or unable to work because of a health condition or disability.

Homelessness leads were established across the jobcentre network as part of the 2018 Rough Sleeping Strategy to work with people facing homelessness.

Lived Experience: when someone has first- hand experience; in this case, experience of homelessness and rough sleeping.

Living on the Streets: individuals who are sleeping rough on a long-term basis. The CHAIN quarterly report defines ‘living on the streets’ as those who local rough sleeping outreach teams have had a high number of contacts with over 3 weeks or more which suggests that they are living on the street; and the annual report defines it as ‘longer-term rough sleepers’ – people who are seen rough sleeping across a minimum of two consecutive years.

Local Authority (LA): a local government organisation, also known as a council, officially responsible for a range of public services, funds and facilities in their local area.

Local Delivery Partners: this includes local authorities and local support service providers across different sectors, including faith, community and non-commissioned services, and health partners who deliver programmes and services on the ground to support people sleeping rough. Local Delivery Partners include but are not limited to those delivering services across housing, community support, social care, criminal justice and rehabilitation, employment and finances, and healthcare.

Local Housing Allowance (LHA): determines the maximum amount of housing support available to claimants in the Private Rented Sector. A claimant’s LHA rate depends on where they live and the number of bedrooms their household is deemed to need, up to a maximum of 4 bedrooms.

Modern Slavery: a serious crime that violates human rights in which people are exploited for criminal gain. Modern slavery encompasses human trafficking and slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labour. Further information on modern slavery can be found in the Modern Slavery Statutory Guidance for England and Wales and Non-Statutory Guidance for Scotland and Northern Ireland.

MoD: Ministry of Defence

MoJ: Ministry of Justice

Multiple Disadvantage: many people sleeping rough may be experiencing a range of complex and overlapping needs. The Changing Futures Programme (see definition above) defines multiple disadvantage as experiencing three or more of the following at the same time: homelessness; substance misuse; mental ill health, domestic abuse, and contact with the criminal justice system.

NHS: National Health Service

NHSEI: NHS England and NHS Improvement

NICE Guidelines: recommendations published by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) – a What Works Centre committed to increasing the supply of and demand for evidence needed by decision-makers – that have been made based on a review of the evidence across broad health and social care topics.

Ofsted: Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills

OVA: Office for Veterans’ Affairs

Person-Centred: the practice of involving an individual at the centre of a service they receive, by individualising support and opportunities, so that it is tailored to the person’s preferences, needs and values.

Priority Need: Section 188 of Housing Act 1996 requires housing authorities to secure accommodation for homeless applicants who have a priority need for accommodation based on certain circumstances (such as pregnancy or having child dependents, being homeless as a result of domestic abuse or an emergency disaster, being vulnerable as a result of a disability or a health condition, or having been in care, prison or the Armed Forces).

Non-UK Nationals who have Restricted Eligibility for Public Funds: Individuals from outside the UK who have restricted access to some forms of support and services as a result of their immigration status, such as having limited leave to remain with an ‘no recourse to public funds’ condition.

Rough Sleeping: the most acute and extreme form of homelessness that is characterised by someone about to, or actually, bedding down in the open air (such as on the street, in tents, doorways, parks, bus shelters or encampments) or places not designed for habitation (including cardboard boxes, stairwells, cars and other makeshift and not fit for purpose places). Rough sleeping does not include instances of those in hostels, shelters, recreational shelters such as campsites or spaces of protest, squatters, and travellers.

Rough Sleeping Advisory Panel: a panel comprised of leadership from mayoral authorities, local authorities and homelessness sector organisations, formed to provide honest and expert advice to the Minister for Rough Sleeping and Housing and inform government’s approach to ending rough sleeping.

Rough Sleeping Initiative (RSI): The RSI provides tailored funding to local authorities to reduce the number of people sleeping rough in their area and enhance services for those at risk of sleeping rough.

Rough Sleeping Questionnaire (RSQ): was a questionnaire collected through 2019 and early 2020 from people who sleep rough, including interviews with over 500 respondents, to enable the collection and interpretation of data that provides a comprehensive understanding of the backgrounds, histories of homelessness, support needs, and public service use of those sleeping rough.

Social Housing: housing to rent below the market rent or to buy through shared ownership or equity percentage arrangements, that is made available to people whose needs are not adequately served by the housing market.

Spending Review: the process through which government departments work with HM Treasury to plan and acquire forecasted annual or multi-year expenditure needed to deliver public services.

StreetLink: a website, mobile app and phone service for England and Wales, which enables people to send an alert when they see someone sleeping rough to connect that person to local support services that can help to end their homelessness.

Supported Housing: accommodation that is provided alongside support and supervision, to help people live as independently as possible. Supported housing may, for example, help those with vulnerabilities relating to age, disabilities, substance abuse, release from prison or care, and abuse.

Tailored Offer of Support: making sure that people experiencing rough sleeping have access to the services they need, when they need them and in a way that suits them based on the stage they are at in their journey to recovery.

Target Priority Group: people that experience long-term and cyclical rough sleeping – known to local authorities as the Target Priority Group or Target Thousand in London.

Trauma-Informed: as defined within NICE Guidance, trauma-informed is defined as ‘an approach to planning and providing services that involves understanding, recognising and responding to the effects of all types of trauma. It emphasises physical, relational and emotional safety, and helps survivors of trauma to rebuild narratives of connection, control and empowerment.’ In practice this means being sensitive to the trauma that service users may have experienced and actively seeking to prevent re-traumatisation. This can help to address some of the barriers those affected by trauma can experience when accessing the care and services they need.

Universal Credit: a payment to help with living costs. It’s paid monthly. People may be able to get it if they are on a low income, out of work or they cannot work.

Universal Credit Day-One Advance: if someone is struggling financially while they wait for their first Universal Credit payment, they may be able to get an advance payment. This will be recovered over an agreed period of up to 24 months.

Whole System Approach: This approach recognises that a person experiencing rough sleeping will interact with a range of different services and how those services need to work together to provide holistic support for an individual and collaborate across organisational boundaries to find effective solutions to end rough sleeping.

The Voluntary Sector (or non-profit or Third Sector) – this term is used to describe the work of charities and other organisations which are neither private businesses or those carried out by local or national government. The Voluntary Sector includes charities which are commissioned by local authorities to deliver services to address rough sleeping.

The Community & Faith Sector – this term describes the work of grassroots community groups, churches and other faith groups which deliver services to help people experiencing rough sleeping, such as night shelters, drop-ins and soup kitchens. There is a wide range of these groups – some are formalised charities and employ staff, but others are entirely run by volunteers. It has been a key part of the Rough Sleeping Initiative to engage positively with these groups and ensure they work positively alongside the commissioned and council-run services.

1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1047271/forecast-paris-population-france/; https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20210401-despite-decline-nearly-3-000-still-sleeping-rough-on-the-streets-of-paris-poverty-housing-covid ↩

2. https://www.dw.com/en/germany-nearly-2000-homeless-in-berlin-says-census/a-52288746; https://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/berlin-population ↩

3. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/rough-sleeping-snapshot-in-england-autumn-2021; https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/bulletins/populationandhouseholdestimatesenglandandwales/census2021 ↩

4. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1047271/forecast-paris-population-france/; https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20210401-despite-decline-nearly-3-000-still-sleeping-rough-on-the-streets-of-paris-poverty-housing-covid ↩

5. https://www.dw.com/en/germany-nearly-2000-homeless-in-berlin-says-census/a-52288746; https://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/berlin-population ↩

6. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/rough-sleeping-snapshot-in-england-autumn-2021; https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/bulletins/populationandhouseholdestimatesenglandandwales/census2021 ↩

7. This is compared the 83 areas that had the next number of people sleeping rough in 2017, but did not have RSI funding ↩

8. This information is based on monitoring information provided by the pilots. ↩

9. Based on anecdotal evidence from the sector. ↩

10. Kerslake Commission, Commission’s Final Report, 2021, p20 ↩

11. Crisis.org, The Plan to End Homelessness, Chapter 8 ↩

12. Based on the 21/22 accommodation at release figures from the annual Community Performance Statistics. ↩

13. This includes a 57% increase in the number of referrals from Children’s Services between 2019-20 and 2020-21 and an 81% increase from Prisons and Probation in the same period. ↩

14. 2020 review of implementation of Homelessness Reduction Act ↩

15. This is based on the number of prisoners released homeless or rough sleeping in 19/20. The 19/20 figures have been used to give an indication of the maximum number of potential homeless or rough sleeping prison leavers that may need to be supported by CAS-3. This is because latter years have been affected by number of additional factors including, a reduction in the number of releases, the impact of Covid-19, the limited rollout of CAS-3 in 21/22. A full breakdown of these figures can be found in the Community Performance Statistics ↩

16. Greater London Full Annual Report 2021-22 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

17. The Allocation of Housing (Qualification Criteria for Armed Forces) (England) Regulations 2012 ↩

18. This information is based on monitoring information provided by the pilots. ↩

19. Housing First initiatives were applied for and agreed through the RSI 22-25 moderation process, while Housing First Pilots only require RSI funding from 2024. ↩