This week, Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced a new national drive to offer everyone sleeping rough in England a route off the streets by Christmas.
The £442 million package includes emergency accommodation and support with housing, health and other needs, alongside a wider commitment to tackle long-term homelessness. Of that total, £102 million is newly announced funding, with the remainder including £340 million previously committed to longer-term accommodation and support.
It is an ambitious announcement — and one we welcome.
But as our CEO, Jon Perry, told BBC Hereford & Worcester this week, the real test will be whether it creates lasting change.
“Why aren’t we trying to end rough sleeping right now? Why are we waiting for Christmas?”
The issue is not the ambition to get people indoors. Nobody should be sleeping in a doorway, on a bench or anywhere else that leaves them exposed and unsafe.
The concern is what happens after Christmas.
A bed for one night is not the end of homelessness
We saw during the pandemic that decisive action can bring people off the streets quickly.
That matters.
But emergency accommodation alone does not address the reasons someone became homeless, nor does it automatically provide the stability they need to avoid returning to the streets.
People may need help with housing, physical and mental health, substance use, finances, benefits, relationships and rebuilding the support networks that have broken down around them.
That is why Jon stressed during his BBC interview that any national response must look beyond a temporary winter intervention.
Getting somebody indoors is an essential first step.
Helping them stay there is the longer-term challenge.
Homelessness is not just a city issue
Jon was also keen to make one point particularly clear:
Homelessness exists across Worcestershire.
Our services support people across the county, and the pressures we are seeing are not confined to Worcester city centre.
Jon described walking the short distance to our Worcester Day Centre recently and encountering around 25 people who were rough sleeping or visibly struggling along the way.
It was during extremely hot weather — another reminder that people sleeping rough face serious risks throughout the year, not only when temperatures fall.
Across our services, we are seeing increasing demand and increasingly complex need.
That is why a national commitment must translate into meaningful local investment.
Prevention has to be part of the answer
The BBC discussion also raised an important wider question: what about the people who are not sleeping rough today, but are frighteningly close to losing their homes?
For us, these are not competing priorities.
A successful homelessness strategy needs to do both.
We need urgent support for the person who has nowhere safe to sleep tonight.
But we also need earlier intervention for the person facing rent arrears, relationship breakdown, insecure accommodation, financial crisis or another situation that could push them into homelessness tomorrow.
Our developing work across Worcestershire increasingly reflects exactly that approach: responding to crisis while creating stronger routes into prevention, early intervention and longer-term stability.
A welcome commitment — but it must be sustained
The Government’s announcement also includes additional investment in the Ending Homelessness in Communities Fund, supporting voluntary and community organisations delivering homelessness services.
That recognition of the role charities and local organisations play is important.
As Jon said on BBC Hereford & Worcester, the way we judge a society is not simply by those doing well, but by what happens to the people most at risk of being left behind.
We welcome the Government putting rough sleeping high on the national agenda.
We welcome the additional investment.
And we welcome the belief that rough sleeping is not inevitable.
But if the ambition is genuinely to end it, the work cannot stop when Christmas is over.
It requires sustained investment in housing, health, prevention and community-based support — and a commitment to ensuring that when somebody is helped off the streets, they have a realistic route towards something permanent.
Because the goal should not simply be to get everyone in for Christmas.
It should be to make sure nobody has to go back out again.
