Government Spending Review: don’t squander progress made on rough sleeping warns The Salvation Army
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The Government must not short-change rough sleepers by cutting
vital funding, The Salvation Army has urged. The church and charity
has written to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to warn that the
Government risks squandering any progress made reducing rough
sleeping if it spends less than it did this year on homelessness
services. The letter has been co-signed by other major homelessness
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The Government must not short-change rough sleepers by cutting vital funding, The Salvation Army has urged. The church and charity has written to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to warn that the Government risks squandering any progress made reducing rough sleeping if it spends less than it did this year on homelessness services. The letter has been co-signed by other major homelessness charities and service providers and sent ahead of the one-year Spending Review on 25 November. Recent figures show that a new cohort of vulnerable people has been forced onto the streets as a result of the pandemic. A concerning 55% of these were new rough sleepers, many of whom will have lost stable accommodation as a result of the wider economic downturn1. While the £15 million Prevent Programme will go some way to relieving the immediate crisis, the long-term outlook for homelessness and rough sleeping currently looks bleak. Many of those who sheltered as part of the ‘Everyone In’ initiative during the first lockdown are still without more permanent accommodation, and the long-term support needed to tackle the complex reasons for their homelessness, like mental ill health, fleeing domestic violence and addictions, has still to be put in place. Lorrita Johnson2, Salvation Army Director of Homelessness Services, said: “We have just turned a corner on the damage done in the 2010s when homelessness and rough sleeping rose as funding for services went down. After years of underfunding, investment increased significantly in response to the outbreak of Covid-19. But without consistent, long-term funding more people will be on the streets, sofa surfing and trying to raise families in cramped temporary accommodation. “We understand why the Chancellor has to make short-term spending commitments to tackle the economic fall out of the pandemic, but we need assurances that money will be set aside to protect people from homelessness. Currently we have no idea what will happen to funding at the end of March 2021. “To resolve this uncertainty and ensure that the progress that has been made so far is not squandered, the Government must make a significant investment at the one-year Spending Review this month. “Not only is there a moral argument for protecting people from the risks of sleeping on the streets, but there is also an economic argument to invest now to save money in the future. If the crisis is allowed to spiral once again, as well as rough sleeping rising, thousands of families will end up in temporary accommodation at a cost to local authorities of billions of pounds every year3”.
In particular The Salvation Army and partners are
calling for the Chancellor to: Chief Executive of St Mungo’s Steve Douglas CBE, a signatory to the letter, said: “After years of underfunding, which saw levels of homelessness and rough sleeping rise substantially across the 2010s, this year has seen investment increase significantly in response to the outbreak of Covid-19. “The introduction of the Next steps and Rough Sleepers Accommodation programmes marks a positive move towards multi-year funding settlements, and has been welcomed. “However, as we enter the latter stages of negotiations between Government departments and the Treasury on budgets for the spending review, the chancellor should ensure that at the very minimum this year’s level of investment of £700 million in homelessness and rough sleeping is maintained through the next financial year. “This though, will still leave a £1bn shortfall in investment to local authorities for homelessness services over the last decade, and this should also be restored.” The church and charity recently published the Future-Proof the Roof report4, which outlines how the Government can invest now to permanently reduce homelessness and rough sleeping while saving money in the long term. The Salvation Army is braced for the worst Christmas in years for rough sleepers and is battling to protect people with nowhere to turn around the country:
Abi Brunswick, Director, Project 17 Niamh Eastwood, Executive Director, Release Sherrylyn Peck, CEO, Safer London Steve Douglas CBE, Chief Executive, St Mungo’s Pam Orchard, Chief Executive, The Connection at St Martin’s Professor Andrew Hayward, Director, UCL Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care
James Boultbee, CEO, Wycombe Homeless
Connection 1The latest CHAIN figures recorded 3,444 people sleeping rough in Greater London between July and September 2020, of which 1,901 were sleeping rough for the first time. 2 Lorrita Johnson joined The Salvation Army as Director of Homelessness Services in July 2020 from a previous appointment as the Strategic Lead, Housing Solutions for Thurrock Council. Here she had overall management and leadership of the Homelessness Service including the Council’s Social Housing Allocation Scheme. 3 The amount spent on temporary accommodation by local authorities in England is published by the Ministry of Housing, Community and Local Government (Scroll down to Revenue outturn housing services, (RO4) 2018 to 2019). 4 The report ‘Future-proof the Roof - The case for sustainable investment to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping post-Covid-19’ is available for download here. |