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Rough sleeping fund tripled to £30m as winter homelessness bites

Rough sleeping fund tripled to £30m as winter homelessness bites
Rosie Murray-West
Written By:
Posted:
20/01/2025
Updated:
20/01/2025

The Rough Sleeping Winter Pressures Funding has been given to 280 councils, including all London boroughs, to be spent on ensuring rough sleepers have emergency accommodation in winter.

Rushanara Ali, the minister for homelessness, said the tripling of the fund was there to “help the most vulnerable into safe and secure housing with warm beds, hot meals, and specialist care”.

“Today’s emergency cash injection is just one branch of the Government’s Plan for Change to raise living standards for working people and families, deliver the biggest boost in affordable and social housing in a generation, and strengthen rights and protections for tenants,” she said.

The rise of homelessness

From July to September last year, a total of 4,780 people were recorded as sleeping rough in London alone.

Official figures before that suggest this is a steep rise – they showed that there were 3,898 people sleeping rough across England on a single night in autumn 2023, up from 1,768 in 2010.

Recent analysis by the Financial Times found that one in every 200 households in the UK is homeless, while Government figures also found that the number of households facing homelessness rose 8% between 2023 and 2024, and exceeds 320,000 – the highest on record.

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A population higher than that of the city of Nottingham is now homeless in England.

Those experiencing homelessness or rough sleeping are 8-12 times more likely to die prematurely, particularly from chronic cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, and those sleeping rough during winter are at even greater risk of ill health and long-term sickness.

Government programmes

As well as emergency programmes like the Winter Pressures Funding, the Government has a number of other schemes aimed at stopping homelessness and rough sleeping under the Plan For Change.

This includes £1bn invested in homelessness prevention, £37bn on a rough sleeping accommodation programme, and a new dedicated inter-ministerial group to tackle the root causes of rough sleeping.

“This Government is more determined than ever to turn the tide on years of failure to properly invest in our frontline services,” Ali said.