Our call on Government to support the goal of ending homelessness for good.
Introduction
The Government have committed to a cross-departmental homelessness and rough sleeping strategy working to bring an end to homelessness.
The LGA view is that the upcoming strategy must mark a step change in ambition and action that must fully enable councils and their partners to end homelessness for good, through prevention, addressing the housing affordability crisis, and tackling the social and systemic factors that lead people into homelessness in the first place.
LGA position
Councils are at the sharp end of the housing and homelessness crisis. Every day, local authorities work tirelessly to prevent and relieve homelessness and support those who are at risk — but without fundamental reform and a truly joined-up approach across government, homelessness will continue to rise. The causes and impacts of homelessness are complex, interrelated and multidimensional. Addressing homelessness sustainably and effectively requires joint thinking, shared learning and collaboration across a wide range of partners and disciplines, including the voices of frontline staff and people with lived experience.
The impact of the current housing crisis on communities and the public purse is increasingly unsustainable. Government data shows 324,990 households were assessed as being owed a homelessness duty in 2023/4, an increase of 8.8 per cent from 2022/3. The number of households in temporary accommodation has also reached over 131,100, and the average house price in England is now 7.7 times higher than average annual earnings. The increasing costs of providing homelessness services with complex contributory factors such as asylum and resettlement issues has meant councils’ budgeted net spend on homelessness services has increased by £604 million (77.4 per cent) in real terms from 2019/20 to 2024/5 and in 2023/4 councils spent nearly £2.3 billion on the provision of temporary accommodation alone.
Government reforms to address some of the key challenges have been welcomed, including; Right to Buy reforms, commitments to ban 'no fault' evictions, introducing a multi-year social housing rent settlement, and an increased Affordable Homes Programme and homelessness funding. Despite these however there is much to be done to support the commitment to work to end homelessness, and councils’ delivery sits at the heart of this.
Other lobbying positions sit alongside and should be considered in this work such as the asks to make permanent the extension to the 56-day period for asylum seekers leaving Home Office accommodation after a decision on their claim in line with the Homelessness Reduction Act, and engaging Councils well in advance of any decisions on opening or closing asylum accommodation rather than after a decision has been made. In addition to this, the LGA’s position on reducing child poverty which includes recommendations on taking a more preventative, upstream approach to the underlying causes of socioeconomic inequality and family hardship.
Councils stand ready to deliver but cannot solve this challenge alone. Homelessness prevention requires a whole-society approach: national and local government, the NHS, schools, employers, landlords, the voluntary sector and communities all have a role to play.
This position statement sets out our asks for the cross departmental homelessness strategy, which would help councils and partners to support the aim of ending homelessness.
The Government's role
The LGA has long supported whole system reform to work towards ending homelessness, and the LGA’s recommendation for the role government can play to best support this work is by:
- Creating accountability: Ensuring that stakeholders are incentivised to prevent homelessness and held to account for delivering their role in prevention.
- Ensuring deliverability: Ensuring that resources are aligned with preventative goals, flexible, stable in the long-term, and sufficient for stakeholders to effectively deliver their role in homelessness prevention.
- Fostering collaboration: Creating the conditions for effective local-level partnerships.
- Driving evidence-based policy: Driving and sharing the results of experimentation and rigorous evaluation and supporting efforts to scale proven interventions.
Our recommendations for the strategy
Enable sustainable funding structures
| LGA recommendation | How this would help |
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Pool funding for prevention at a local level. Long-term, flexible, multi-agency homelessness prevention budgets should be established. |
This would support joined-up commissioning between councils, the NHS and partners, reducing fragmentation and enabling strategic planning. The ring fencing of current funding pots, such as the Homelessness Prevention Grant, prevents councils from appropriately being able to flex funding to meet pressures that arise, and lifting this fencing will support the strategic planning required to meet demand. |
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Uprated the temporary accommodation subsidy rate to 90 per cent of the prevailing LHA rate. |
This would also allow councils to collect a more reflective cost of temporary accommodation and support their funding. |
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Fully funding and delivering on existing homelessness commitments including the recruitment, training, and retention of skilled housing officers, caseworkers, and prevention specialists. |
The Homelessness Reduction Act and Rough Sleeping Strategy created important foundations, but without the resources to match rising demand, councils will remain in a cycle of firefighting. The funding of existing commitments should support specific at-risk cohorts and provide councils a chance to develop best practice models to support prevention. |
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Invest in supported housing and housing-related support through establishing a sustainable long term funding settlement for supported housing and accelerating the rollout of the Supported Housing Act 2023. |
Supported housing plays a critical role in both preventing and resolving homelessness. It minimises the need to rely on costly services such as hospitals, care homes, and emergency accommodation while providing a stable environment for tenants. This will give councils and providers confidence to invest in support services. |
Housing and accommodation delivery
| LGA recommendation | How this would help |
|---|---|
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Invest in social and affordable homes, with at least 100,000 new social homes per year. |
The Affordable Housing programme announcement is welcomed, however a further step change in the supply of genuinely affordable, secure, high-quality homes is vital. This will help to meet local needs and relieve pressure on homelessness services and would improve public finances by £24.5 billion over 30 years. |
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Provide councils with the tools and flexibilities to acquire settled housing and incentivise short-term temporary accommodation providers to offer longer-term, settled homes, such as the introduction of an intermediate housing product with rents charged at ‘LHA+’ rates. |
Enabling councils to offer settled homes – not just temporary accommodation which would support the residents and communities, as well as reducing the increasing financial pressures on councils. The intermediate housing at LHA+ rates would encourage the conversion of nightly-rate and council-owned temporary accommodation into settled housing where the current LHA rates disincentives private landlords from offering accommodation, and the current homelessness grant levels means councils cannot viably offer settled housing at social rents. The wider effects of this would improve outcomes for households financially and socially, while also reduce the overall cost of the housing benefit bill. |
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Alongside the positive housebuilding reforms in the spending review, implementing further reform to the Right to Buy, including reviewing eligibility criteria and the ability to set discounts locally - as outlined in our position statement and our response to the Government’s consultation. |
This would support councils to increase their supply and the quality of affordable housing to meet the demand. There are currently over 1.3 million households on a waitlist for social housing, and it is getting increasingly hard for councils to replace social housing as it’s being sold. Reform to other avenues for councils to increase supply is needed alongside the housebuilding programme to ensure there is access to the supply needed. |
Securing income and reducing poverty
| LGA recommedation | How this would help |
|---|---|
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Local Housing Allowance rates must at minimum keep pace with the bottom 30 per cent of local rents alongside reviewing the shared accommodation rate and the benefit cap. |
This will prevent shortfalls in rent that force households into homelessness. Currently, eviction from the private rented sector is one of the leading causes of homelessness and supporting people to afford their accommodation in line with the market will help lower demand. A wider review of the benefits system and pathways into employment in light of the reforms laid out in the Spring 2024 spending review will also support work to ensure people are able to afford a home. |
Driving evidenced based policy
| LGA recommedation | How this would help |
|---|---|
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Establish an innovation and evidence hub to evaluate what works in homelessness prevention, aligned with the LGA’s wider work on Public Sector Reform. |
This will support councils and their partners in scaling successful approaches through strengthening the evidence base. The LGA published guidance on tackling rough sleeping in rural England, which has risen in recent years, on the importance of better evidence led approaches. |
Strategic alignment with joint accountability
| LGA recommedation | How this would help |
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Ensure that the homelessness strategy is aligned with other government strategies, and include ending homelessness as an outcome with specific provisions for particularly at risk cohorts. Strengthening user-led service design here will also support effective reform and outcomes. |
The Homelessness Strategy should inform and support others, such as the long-term housing strategy and NHS 10 year plan actions, where joining up work on prevention and outcomes across services can support the overall ambition to end homelessness and rough sleeping. All government agencies should be accountable for their role in preventing and ending homelessness and working collectively to drive this forward. |
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Develop a cross-departmental approach to prevention with ending homelessness adopted as a clear national outcome across departments. The approach should include the procurement of housing, and funding support for cohorts particularly at risk of homelessness and rough sleeping, including; refugees and asylum seekers, care leavers, people leaving prison, and victim-survivors of domestic abuse.
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A cross departmental approach to prevention will support the whole system to work more effectively and stop people falling through the gaps. This is particularly acute for issues such as dual diagnosis where alignment between health and social care is necessary to achieve outcomes. Efforts to ensure key policies, including a move to more equitable dispersal of asylum seekers and more locally led approaches to resettlement schemes for example, will help the mitigations of disproportionate homelessness risks and pressures facing councils while lowering demand in the long term. Ending homelessness should be a national mission sitting at the heart of the Government’s strategies. |
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Introduce a clear duty to identify, act, and collaborate to prevent homelessness across departments and local services, and extend this to housing providers and schools, and to prevent discharging into homelessness and rough sleeping |
This will ensure public services are accountable for their role in preventing homelessness, and councils need public services to take shared responsibility across the whole system. |
Our next steps
To supplement this position statement, the LGA will continue to work with local authorities to ensure the major challenges are being considered.
We will also continually add case studies from local authorities around the country showcasing how these asks could bring about new social homes for rent.