Labour pledges 'moral mission' to save lives this Christmas and end rough sleeping

Wednesday, 4 December 2019 22:30

Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party, and John Healey, Shadow Housing Secretary, have criticised the Conservatives for being “directly responsible” for people living and dying on the country’s streets, and pledged a national “moral mission” to save lives this winter and end rough sleeping. As part of major new plans to fulfil the Labour Party’s manifesto pledge to end rough sleeping within five years, Labour has announced: A £600m Modern Hostels...Request free trial

As part of major new plans to fulfil the Labour Party’s manifesto pledge to end rough sleeping within five years, Labour has announced:

A £600m Modern Hostels Fund for good quality homeless accommodation with 5,000 additional bed spaces to take people off the streets and help them rebuild their lives.
£200m Hostels Transformation Fund to turn existing hostels into places where homeless people can turn their lives around
A new £100m a year scheme for emergency winter shelter and support to save lives, starting this winter, and get people off the streets in the cold weather
4,000 additional ‘Housing First’ homes – a pioneering scheme to get some rough sleepers straight off the streets and into permanent housing, and 4,000 new permanent ‘move-on’ homes, ring-fenced for rough sleepers moving out of hostel accommodation

This package will be backed up with an additional £1 billion a year earmarked from council budgets to pay for staffing and support, and funding to re-link local housing allowance with local rents – major new pledges to tackle homelessness contained in the Labour manifesto. Together, Labour’s plans add up to the biggest package of help for the homeless in at least 20 years.

Rough sleeping has more than doubled since 2010, and the number of people dying homeless has risen by 50 per cent in the last five years, totalling 726 people last year.

Since 2010, the Conservatives have cut £1bn out of local homelessness services so there are almost 9,000 fewer hostel beds, slashed funding for social housing so the number of Government-funded homes for social rent has fallen by 90 per cent and dramatically reduced housing benefit entitlements, which the National Audit Office says has directly led to higher homelessness.

At least 135,000 children will be homeless and living in temporary accommodation across Britain this Christmas.

Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party, said:

“One person sleeping rough is one too many.

“No one wants to live in a society where thousands of homeless people are left out in the cold on the streets.

“Labour will save lives this winter and end rough sleeping within five years. That's real change.”

John Healey, Labour's Shadow Housing Secretary, said:

“Rising homelessness shames us all in a country as well-off as ours.

“It shames the Conservative Party most of all because it is Conservative decisions to slash funding for hostels, housing benefit, homelessness services and new homes that are directly responsible for this increase in people living and dying on our streets.

“With Labour this will change. We need a new moral mission to save lives this winter and end rough sleeping within five years.”

Ends

Notes to editors

The capital spend for Labour's plans comes from our Social Transformation Fund and the revenue was accounted for in our ‘Grey Book’ – Funding Real Change. https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Funding-Real-Change.pdf

Rough sleeping has more than doubled since 2010: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/781567/Rough_Sleeping_Statistics_2018_release.pdf

726 people died homeless in England and Wales last year. The number of homeless deaths has risen by 51% over the last five years: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsofhomelesspeopleinenglandandwales/2018
Data from the body representing homelessness organisations, Homeless Link, reveals that there were 34,900 hostel beds in England last year, down from 43,655 in 2010. Three-quarters of homeless services have turned people away because they were full. https://www.homeless.org.uk/sites/default/files/site-attachments/Annual%20Review2018.pdf

The National Audit Office found that cuts to local housing allowance were responsible for higher homelessness, saying “Changes to Local Housing Allowance… are an element of the increase in homelessness”: https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Homelessness.pdf

The number of Government-funded homes for social rent has fallen to fewer than 1,000 – a fall of over 90% since 2010: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/809387/Live_Table_1012.xlsx

At least 135,000 children in Britain to be homeless at Christmas https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/dec/03/at-least-135000-children-in-britain-will-be-homeless-at-christmas

On Monday 2 December, Jeremy Corbyn visited Surviving the Streets, a homelessness charity in Hastings. He joined their outreach team handing out food parcels, clothes and hot drinks to rough sleepers in Hastings town centre talking to them about their experiences. Embargoed pictures and broadcast clip from the visit are available.

Labour’s plan to end to end rough sleeping

1. An end to rough sleeping with a new Prime Minister led taskforce

Labour’s plan to end rough sleeping will be guided by a clear goal: that no one in England has to sleep rough within five years of the election of a Labour Government.

The last Labour Government cut rough sleeping dramatically after 18 years of Conservative Governments led to a huge rise in street homelessness and ‘tent cities’ in places like Lincoln’s Inn Fields and the Bull Ring at Waterloo. In 2008, Labour had reduced rough sleeping by two-thirds, and set out a plan to end rough sleeping for good by 2012: https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100519185418/http:/www.communities.gov.uk/documents/housing/pdf/endingroughsleeping

To drive change across Whitehall, Jeremy Corbyn will chair a new taskforce focused on ending rough sleeping within five years. The taskforce will bring together the Departments and Ministers needed to make this a reality, including the new Department of Housing, the Department of Health and Social Care, and the Department for Work and Pensions.

2. New hostels and supported housing funding

Labour’s Modern Hostels Fund will provide:

Over £600m in capital funding, sufficient to fund the construction, conversion, or acquisition of new state-of-the-art hostel and supported accommodation with 5,000 additional bed spaces. Examples of the kinds of hostel accommodation include Arlington, run by the housing association, One Housing, and the examples collated in Homeless Link’s report ‘The Future Hostel’: https://www.homeless.org.uk/sites/default/files/site-attachments/TheFuture Hostel_June 2018.pdf

This could be on traditional hostel model with individual rooms and shared communal areas, or self-contained flats with access to support and advice from hostel staff.

Providers such as councils, housing associations, and charities will be eligible to bid for this funding. Bids will be expected to incorporate some of the best features of modern hostels, such as on-site training facilities, work-spaces, or space for dedicated health services.

Labour’s Hostels Transformation Fund will provide:

Over £200m in dedicated funding for major improvement works to existing homeless hostels to turn them into places of change. Examples of work that could be conducted under the fund include: creating new spaces for in-house health services or clinics, creating new on-site training, education or communal areas, re-developing reception areas to make them more welcoming and removing outdated dormitory accommodation and replacing it with self-contained rooms.

Special priority will be given to the bottom 25% of hostels in England most in need of improvement to bring them up to standard.

This builds on the last Labour Government’s Hostels Capital Improvement Programme, which were assessed by Crisis and the University of York as having “achieved significant improvements in hostel provision and outcomes for service users”: https://www.crisis.org.uk/media/237173/a_review_of_single_homelessness_in_the_uk_2000-2010.pdf

This capital investment will be backed by an additional £1bn in earmarked local government funding for homelessness, to pay for staff and associated running costs, replacing the funding lost since 2010: https://www.mungos.org/news/funding-gap-homeless-services/

3. New housing for the homeless

Homeless charities say the most pressing problem they have in helping those who have been sleeping rough rebuild their lives is lack of low-cost housing for them to move into. Labour’s plan for new housing for the homeless would be comprised of two elements:

4,000 units of ‘housing first’ accommodation, targeted at those rough sleepers with the most complex problems or who have been cycling between hostels and the streets for some time, and for whom support in a traditional hostel setting is unlikely to be successful.

4,000 units of move-on accommodation for those with a history of rough sleeping, building on the ‘clearing house’ scheme used in London, but under Labour’s plans available across the country in areas of highest demand. These homes would be made available in short order by housing associations through a new deal struck with Labour in government, and with funding for replacements then made available in return.

4. Emergency support to start saving lives this winter

Labour will introduce a dedicated £100m a year scheme for emergency winter accommodation and support to prevent people dying on the streets in cold weather, as part of a new duty on local authorities which is missing at present. The £100m fund could pay for keyworker staff, food and welfare costs in every area; a local authority co-ordinator in every area; the buying or leasing of additional emergency accommodation where necessary; and extra support via existing charities, churches and faith groups.

5. Tackling the root causes of rising homelessness

Labour will also take wider action on the root causes of rising homelessness, including legislating for a new charter of renters’ rights, scrapping Universal Credit, funding the re-linking of local housing allowance to cover the cheapest 30% of private rented housing in every area, and helping ease housing pressures with over a million council and housing association homes over ten years, the biggest such programme since the 1960s.