In the short term, we need political will and aspiration across the Westminster, Scottish and Welsh Governments to go above and beyond current thinking. There are a good number of positive policy initiatives in each nation, but we want all governments to be even more aspirational and commit to ending homelessness.
To achieve this, each government will need to think strategically. They must work with colleagues across all relevant government departments and at local and national levels. They must think beyond just rough sleeping.
Some political reforms can be adopted immediately; others will take longer. And to sustain the progress, a commitment to end homelessness must be both cross political and span electoral cycles. This means future governments adhere to a consistent mandate committing to successfully implementing or refining these polices. Therefore, long-term and cross-party political commitments are critical in stopping any progress being eroded or disregarded by future governments.
There are policies within this plan that should be an immediate priority for current governments; others require significant culture change, considered planning, and initial government investment.
We have defined ‘immediate’ as actions that can be taken straight away – either through legislation, funding or policy change. If recommendations need longer-term political commitment regarding funding, or if a consultation or review is needed, we have identified these as longer-term policy changes.
If this plan is implemented in full, homelessness can be ended within ten years, but only if the harder, more substantial reforms begin when implementation starts.
The time is right for an all-encompassing domestic policy agenda to end homelessness in Britain for good. We call on all three governments to use this plan to take bold, forward thinking actions that make this ambition a reality.
Prevention: Sufficiently fund the homelessness prevention duty. Allocations to local authorities should be set out on a long-term and stable basis. Where necessary, other agencies responsible for prevention activity should have access to additional funds.
Department: MHCLG and HM Treasury
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Prevention: Set out in secondary legislation a mandated set of activities that local authorities should have available to them to help prevent and relieve homelessness. This should include:
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Prevention: Place a duty on all relevant public bodies to prevent homelessness and to cooperate with local housing authorities in relieving homelessness.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Prevention: Ensure that Critical Time Interventions form a key part of national strategies to prevent and end homelessness for groups most at risk, and that sufficient funding is made available to take this to scale.
Department: MHCLG and other relevant central government departments
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Rapid Rehousing: Introduce a new duty for the publication and review of homelessness strategies. Each strategy must contain key performance targets for delivering affordable permanent housing linked to the numbers of people experiencing homelessness, as well as the support required to help people maintain their tenancy and address support needs. Annual reports on progress against key performance targets should be submitted by local authorities to national government and these reports should be made publicly available.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Rapid Rehousing: Protect the long term funding mechanism for emergency accommodation.
Department: DWP
Nation: England, Scotland and Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Rapid Rehousing: Ensure the design of the Universal Credit system is flexible and responsive enough to account for supported housing costs.
Department: DWP
Nation: England, Scotland and Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Rapid Rehousing: Introduce strict time limits on the use of unsuitable temporary accommodation of no more than seven days.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Longer-term
Rough Sleeping: Introduce a duty to provide immediate emergency accommodation to all those with nowhere safe to stay until priority need is abolished.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Rough Sleeping: Provide additional funding to local authorities to scale up the No First Night Out approach across England to prevent people rough sleeping.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Rough Sleeping: Increase funding to scale up an assertive outreach model across England to deliver a more robust and personalised form of support to all rough sleepers that focuses on moving them into permanent accommodation.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Rough Sleeping: Provide personal budgets for rough sleepers that require high levels of support.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Rough Sleeping: Increase investment in StreetLink and use learnings from its recent evaluation to promote better use of the service.
Department: MHCLG and GLA
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Rough Sleeping: Introduce a national reconnections framework and collect and publish data on long term outcomes for rough sleepers that are reconnected in England.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Rough Sleeping: Abolish local connection criteria for rough sleepers, and ensure it no longer presents a barrier to assistance for anyone threatened with or experiencing homelessness.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Rough Sleeping: Abolish The Vagrancy Act (1824).
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England and Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Rough Sleeping: Where a person has died whilst homeless and living on the streets, ensure that a safeguarding review takes place.
Department: Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC)
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Welfare: Return Local Housing Allowance rates to the 30th percentile of market rents.
Department: DWP
Nation: England, Scotland and Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Welfare: Further improve the accuracy of Local Housing Allowance rates by using annual data from a national register on the size (number of bedrooms) of private landlords’ rental property, and the level of rent they are charging.
Department: DWP
Nation: England, Scotland and Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Welfare: Change the way Local Housing Allowance is uprated to match average projected rent increases.
Department: MHCLG and DWP
Nation: England, Scotland and Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Welfare: Exempt the following groups of homeless people and those at risk of homelessness from the Shared Accommodation Rate: people made a Housing First offer; care leavers; people fleeing domestic abuse; prison leavers moving on from ‘Approved Premises’; and people with experience of homelessness with alcohol and
drug dependency issues.
Department: DWP
Nation: England, Scotland and Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Welfare: Reduce errors and delays in processing Universal Credit by increasing staff capacity and training to match demand in service centres and on the Universal Credit helpline.
Department: DWP
Nation: England, Scotland and Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Welfare: Ensure homeless people have access to the equivalent financial support that an advance payment would provide, without having to pay it back.
Department: DWP
Nation: England, Scotland and Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Welfare: Grant a three-month delay on any Universal Credit deductions for anyone identified as homeless or at risk of homelessness. And set deductions at an affordable level that does not create a risk of homelessness.
Department: DWP
Nation: England, Scotland and Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Welfare: Introduce greater flexibility to lift the benefit cap in specified circumstances related to homelessness.
Department: DWP
Nation: England, Scotland and Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Welfare: Establish a network of housing and homelessness leads in Jobcentre Plus to integrate housing and employment support.
Department: DWP
Nation: England, Scotland and Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Welfare: Incorporate homelessness and housing need into the Jobcentre Plus work coach assessment framework.
Department: DWP
Nation: England, Scotland and Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Welfare: Include the impact of homelessness on work capability in the alternative criteria guidance for the Work Capability Assessment.
Department: DWP
Nation: England, Scotland and Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Welfare: Reform the conditionality and sanctions regime to ensure it does not cause homelessness.
Department: DWP
Nation: England, Scotland and Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Migrant Homelessness: Reverse the right to rent policy.
Department: Home Office
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Migrant Homelessness: Reverse the extended NHS regulations that have increased the types of secondary healthcare that some migrants must pay for, as well as having introduced up-front charging.
Department: Department of Health and Social Care
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Migrant Homelessness: Issue new guidance to banks regarding the documentation that they must accept as sufficient proof to allow someone to open an account.
Department: Financial Conduct Authority
Nation: England, Scotland and Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Migrant Homelessness: Collect and make publicly available relevant data to measure the impact of Home Office policies on homelessness.
Department: Home Office
Nation: England, Scotland and Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Migrant Homelessness: Make immigration detention centres subject to a statutory duty to refer people who are at risk of homelessness on release to the local housing authority.
Department: Home Office and MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Migrant Homelessness: Ensure that immigration detainees, who would otherwise be homeless on release, are given access to emergency accommodation.
Department: Home Office
Nation: England, Scotland and Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Migrant Homelessness: Ensure that a properly supported voluntary reconnection service is provided for migrants who are homeless or at risk of homelessness and who want to explore the option of returning to their country of origin.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Migrant Homelessness: Reinstate entitlement to Housing Benefit for EEA nationals with jobseeker status.
Department: DWP and HM Treasury
Nation: England, Scotland and Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Migrant Homelessness: Make all EEA nationals with a right to reside eligible for statutory homelessness assistance.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Migrant Homelessness: Ensure EEA nationals who are eligible for statutory homelessness assistance have a limited entitlement to benefits for six months.
Department: DWP and HM Treasury
Nation: England, Scotland and Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Migrant Homelessness: Provide national guidance for every local authority and public agency who might assist EEA nationals, to make clear the links between the right to reside, entitlement to benefits and eligibility for homelessness assistance.
Department: Home Office with the input of relevant departments, and the Scottish and Welsh Governments
Nation: England, Scotland and Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Migrant Homelessness: Ensure that an assertive outreach model, with an emphasis on access to legal, benefits and employment support, is delivered to meet the needs of rough sleeping EEA nationals.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Migrant Homelessness: Address the high level of incorrect decisions currently being made on applications for asylum support by improving quality assurance and giving immigration case workers sufficient training and capacity.
Department: Home Office
Nation: England, Scotland and Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Migrant Homelessness: Extend the move-on period for newly recognised refugees to at least 56 days.
Department: Home Office
Nation: England, Scotland and Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Migrant Homelessness: Ensure support is available to help newly recognised refugees navigate the move-on period and access housing, education, employment and welfare benefits.
Department: Home Office
Nation: England, Scotland and Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Migrant Homelessness: Make the providers of asylum support accommodation subject to a statutory duty to refer people who are leaving asylum accommodation, and are at risk of homelessness, to the local housing authority.
Department: Home Office and MHCLG
Nation: England, Scotland and Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Migrant Homelessness: Ensure that short-term emergency accommodation is provided for migrants who are homeless, or at imminent risk of becoming homeless. This must be provided alongside access to immigration advice.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Migrant Homelessness: Issue guidance for local authorities setting out the duties they owe to migrant households with no recourse to public funds.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Migrant Homelessness: At a minimum, ensure that all migrants at risk of becoming homeless within 56 days are eligible for support under the statutory duty to prevent homelessness.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Migrant Homelessness: Consider how best to grant access to the statutory homelessness system for all migrants.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Longer-term
Housing First: Make Housing First the default option for anyone with complex needs who is experiencing homelessness.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing First: Appoint a national director for Housing First.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing First: Oversee the establishment of national and local targets for the delivery of Housing First tenancies.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing First: Collect and publish data on the fidelity and outcomes of Housing First projects.
Department: MHCLG with the input of relevant departments
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing First: Exempt Housing First participants from the Shared Accommodation Rate, the benefit cap and welfare conditionality and sanctioning.
Department: DWP
Nation: England, Scotland and Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Homelessness Legislation: Ensure housing associations give ‘reasonable preference’ to homeless households in their allocations policies.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Homelessness Legislation: Introduce a funded programme of professional support and training for local housing authority staff.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Homelessness Legislation: Place a duty on local authorities to provide the housing support that has been identified as needed via a personalised housing plan.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Homelessness Legislation: Ensure that there is robust but proportionate regulation, monitoring and inspection of how local authorities, public bodies and social housing providers discharge their homelessness duties.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Longer-term
Homelessness Legislation: Ensure there is a more open system of individual reviews and appeals and access to free or means-tested legal advice.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Longer-term
Homelessness Legislation: Ensure that appropriate provisions are made for households who remain homeless after exhausting their entitlements under the homelessness statutory framework.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Longer-term
Homelessness Legislation: Abolish intentionality in its current form and introduce a new test focusing on deliberate manipulation of the homelessness system.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Longer-term
Homelessness Legislation: Abolish the priority need criteria.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Longer-term
Housing Solutions: Set a national target for delivering 90,000 homes a year at social rent levels and grow investment to meet this target over a 15 year period.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing Solutions: Increase the share of government housing investment to meet the target for social rented housing through new build, acquisition and the conversion of empty/obsolete buildings.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing Solutions: Ensure that all developing housing associations provide a proportion of new homes at rents that homeless and other low income households can afford to occupy.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing Solutions: Prevent further erosion of the social rented housing stock by ending the policy of requiring housing associations to convert social rent homes to affordable rent.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing Solutions: Suspend the right to buy policy until the Westminster Government puts in place a programme of investment and wider changes to reverse the decline in the supply of homes at social rents.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing Solutions: Extend flexibility on local authority housing revenue account borrowing to increase the delivery of homes for social rent.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing Solutions: Ensure that the rent setting framework for social housing delivers rents that are affordable to those on low earnings and in receipt of Housing Benefit.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing Solutions: Create a definition of affordable housing that relates housing costs to households’ ability to pay, and meets the needs of low income groups.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing Solutions: Revise national allocations guidance to ensure homeless people are not excluded for registering from social housing.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing Solutions: Create a regulatory requirement that all registered providers of mainstream social housing set an annual guideline target for the minimum proportion of social lettings to homeless nominees and report on this publicly.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing Solutions: Ensure all social housing providers fulfil their responsibilities to cooperate with the local authorities in meeting their homelessness duties and are encouraged to adopt best practice in supporting homeless people into social housing, including best practice in the use of pre-tenancy assessments.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing Solutions: Ensure local authorities and social housing providers monitor and report publicly on their performance of providing settled homes for homeless people.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing Solutions: Amend the Regulator of Social Housing’s regulatory objectives to include safeguarding and promoting the interests of homeless people, as well as current and future tenants (mirroring the objectives of the Scottish Housing Regulator).
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing Solutions: Require every private sector landlord to ensure any home they rent is fit for human habitation at the start of and throughout the tenancy.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing Solutions: Place a statutory duty on local authorities to provide a tenancy relations service.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing Solutions: Introduce a national register that all private landlords and lettings agencies are required to join, and require private landlords and lettings agencies to submit annual data on the size (number of bedrooms) of their rental property and the level of rent they are charging.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing Solutions: Make it easier for local authorities to introduce selective licensing schemes by removing unnecessary financial and bureaucratic barriers.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing Solutions: Introduce national provision of private rented access schemes (help to rent) across England, including a national rent deposit guarantee scheme.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing Solutions: Introduce a new standard private rented tenancy, with no fixed term period, where the landlord can only give notice by using specified grounds, and with limits on annual rent increases linked to an inflationary measure.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Long-term
Housing Solutions: Ensure that build to rent developments play a part in meeting the needs of people moving on from homelessness by revising the definition of affordable private rent housing (at 80% market rents) to encourage provision targeted at households on median earnings in the ward where schemes are located – mirroring the London Living Rent.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing Solutions: Require local authorities to ensure that the permanent mainstream housing needs of homeless people are taken into account through Strategic Housing Market Assessments, and specifically include mapping provision to meet the needs of low income single adults.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing Solutions: Update national planning guidance to ensure it expressly addresses the need for new housing provision for single homeless adults, taking account of the availability of shared and one bedroom supply in the existing housing stock.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing Solutions: Task Homes England with inviting bids piloting build to rent schemes that test the viability of including a proportion of homes for local authority nominees on low incomes and people moving on from homelessness.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Longer-term
Data: Redesign statutory homelessness data collection so that it follows individuals through their journey within the homelessness system.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Data: Introduce a new CHAIN-like system for recording rough sleeping that allows data sharing between the agencies working with people who are rough sleeping or at risk of rough sleeping. The system should also be linked to statutory homelessness data and people living in all forms of emergency accommodation.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Data: Establish data linkage systems that include data sets across health, homelessness, housing, criminal justice, substance misuse, welfare benefits, immigration and employment services.
Department: MHCLG and other relevant central government departments
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Data: Commission the Centre for Homelessness Impact to fill gaps in evidence on homelessness prevention, rapid rehousing approaches, as well as solutions for certain homelessness groups.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Data: Adopt a homelessness outcomes framework.
Department: MHCLG
Nation: England
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Prevention: Introduce a statutory duty to prevent homelessness for all households who are at risk of becoming homeless within 56 days, regardless of priority status, local connection, intentionality or migration status.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Prevention: Sufficiently fund a homelessness prevention duty. Allocations to local authorities should be set out on a long-term and stable basis. Where necessary, other agencies responsible for prevention action should have access to additional funds.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Prevention: Set out in secondary legislation a mandated set of activities that local authorities should have available to them to help prevent and relieve homelessness. This should include:
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Prevention: Place a duty on all relevant public bodies to prevent homelessness and to cooperate with local housing authorities in relieving homelessness.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Prevention: Ensure that Critical Time Interventions form a key part of national strategies to prevent and end homelessness for groups most at risk, and that sufficient funding is made available to take this to scale.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Rapid rehousing: Introduce strict statutory time limits on the use of unsuitable temporary accommodation of no more than seven days. This should apply to all homeless households.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Rapid rehousing: Introduce a new duty for the publication and review of homelessness strategies. Each strategy must contain key performance targets for delivering affordable permanent housing linked to the numbers of people experiencing homelessness, as well as the support required to help people maintain their tenancy and address support needs. Annual reports on progress against key performance targets should be submitted by local authorities to national governments and these reports should be made publically available.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Rough Sleeping: Increase funding to scale up an assertive outreach model across Scotland to deliver a more robust and personalised form of support to all rough sleepers that focuses on moving them into permanent accommodation.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Rough Sleeping: Provide personal budgets for rough sleepers that require high levels of support.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Rough Sleeping: Consider whether to extend the StreetLink service to Scotland.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Rough Sleeping: Introduce a national reconnections framework and collect and publish data on long term outcomes for rough sleepers that are reconnected across Scotland.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Rough Sleeping: Abolish local connection criteria for rough sleepers, and ensure it no longer presents a barrier to assistance for anyone threatened with or experiencing homelessness.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Rough Sleeping: Where a person has died whilst homeless and living on the streets, ensure that a safeguarding review takes place.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Migrant Homelessness: Ensure that a properly supported voluntary reconnection service is provided for migrants who are homeless or at risk of homelessness and who want to explore the option of returning to their country of origin.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Migrant Homelessness: Ensure that an assertive outreach model with an emphasis on access to legal, benefits and employment support is delivered to meet the needs of rough sleeping EEA nationals.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Migrant Homelessness: Ensure that short-term emergency accommodation is provided for migrants who are homeless, or at imminent risk of becoming homeless. This must be provided alongside access to immigration advice.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Migrant Homelessness: Issue guidance for local authorities clearly setting out the duties they owe to migrant households with no recourse to public funds.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Migrant Homelessness: At a minimum, ensure that all migrants at risk of becoming homeless within 56 days, are eligible for support under a statutory duty to prevent homelessness.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing First: Make Housing First the default option for anyone with complex needs who is experiencing homelessness.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate with the input of other relevant directorates)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing First: Appoint a national director for Housing First.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing First: Oversee the establishment of national and local targets for the delivery of Housing First tenancies.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate with the input of other relevant directorates)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing First: Collect and publish data on the fidelity and outcomes of Housing First projects.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate with the input of other relevant directorates)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Legislation: Introduce a funded programme of professional support and training for local authority housing staff.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Legislation: Ensure that appropriate provisions are made for households who remain homeless after exhausting their entitlements under the homelessness statutory framework.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Longer-term
Legislation: Abolish intentionality in its current form and introduce a new test focusing on deliberate manipulation of the homelessness system.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate), Scottish Housing Regulator
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Longer-term
Legislation: Ensure there is a more open system of individual reviews and appeals.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Longer-term
Legislation: Ensure that the regulation, monitoring, and inspection of how local authorities, other public bodies, and social housing providers discharge their homelessness duties is fit for purpose.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate with the input of other relevant directorates)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Longer-term
Housing Solutions: Maintain investment to deliver the equivalent of 5,500 homes a year at social rent levels over a 15-year period, and ensure funding is targeted effectively to meet needs identified at local housing market level.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Longer-term
Housing Solutions: Ensure that the rent setting framework for social housing delivers rents that are affordable to those on low earnings and in receipt of Housing Benefit.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate), Scottish Housing Regulator
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing Solutions: Create a regulatory requirement that all registered providers of mainstream social housing set an annual guideline target for the minimum proportion of social lettings to homeless nominees and report on this publicly.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing Solutions: Ensure all social housing providers fulfil their responsibilities to co-operate with local authorities in meeting their homelessness duties, and are encouraged to adopt best practice in supporting homeless people into social housing – including best practice in the use of pre-tenancy assessments.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate), Scottish Housing Regulator
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing Solutions: Ensure local authorities and housing providers monitor and report publicly on their performance providing settled homes for homeless people.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate), Scottish Housing Regulator
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing Solutions: Place a statutory duty on local authorities to provide tenancy relations service.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing Solutions: As part of the Scottish Landlord Register, require all private landlords and lettings agencies to submit annual data on the size (number of bedrooms) of their rental property and the level of rent they are charging.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing Solutions: All new tenancies should include clauses that limit annual rent increases to a maximum of an inflationary measure.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing Solutions: Review provision of private rented access schemes in Scotland and learning from programmes across Great Britain to consider the case for creating national provision of help to rent schemes for Scotland and national funding for deposit guarantee schemes.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing Solutions: Update national planning guidance to ensure it expressly addresses the need for new housing provision for single homeless adults, taking account of the availability of shared and one bedroom supply in the existing housing stock.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing Solutions: Require local authorities to ensure that the permanent mainstream housing needs of homeless people are taken into account through Housing Need and Demand Assessments and specifically include mapping provision to meet the needs of low income single adults.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Data: Introduce a new CHAIN-like system for recording rough sleeping that allows data sharing between the agencies working with people who are rough sleeping or at risk of rough sleeping. The system should also be linked to statutory homelessness data and people living in all forms of emergency accommodation.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Data: Establish data linkage systems that include data sets across health, homelessness, housing, criminal justice, substance misuse, welfare benefits, immigration and employment services.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Data: Commission the Centre for Homelessness Impact to fill gaps in evidence on homelessness prevention, rapid rehousing approaches, as well as solutions for certain homelessness groups.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Data: Adopt a homelessness outcomes framework.
Department: Scottish Government (Housing and Social Justice Directorate)
Nation: Scotland
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Prevention: Ring fence the Supporting People fund and guarantee beyond the current one-year budget allocation
Department: Local Government and Public Services and Finance
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Prevention: Ensure that Critical Time Interventions form a key part of national strategies to prevent and end homelessness for groups most at risk, and that sufficient funding is made available to take this to scale.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services) and other relevant government departments
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Prevention: Sufficiently fund the homelessness prevention duty. Allocations to the local authorities should be set out on a long-term local basis. Where necessary, other agencies responsible for prevention activity should have access to additional funds.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Prevention: Place a duty on all relevant public bodies to prevent homelessness and to cooperate with local housing authorities in relieving homelessness.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Rapid Rehousing: Introduce strict time limits on the use of temporary accommodation of no more than seven days. This should apply to all homeless households.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Longer-term
Rapid Rehousing: Introduce a new duty for the publication and review homelessness strategies. Each strategy must contain key performance targets for delivering affordable permanent housing linked to the numbers of people experiencing homelessness, as well as the support required to help people maintain their tenancy and address support needs. Annual reports on progress against key performance targets should be submitted by local authorities to national governments and these reports should be made publicly available.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Rough sleeping: Introduce a duty to provide immediate emergency accommodation to all those with nowhere safe to stay until priority need is abolished.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Rough sleeping: Provide additional funding for local authorities to introduce the No First Night Out approach across Wales to prevent people rough sleeping.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Rough sleeping: Increase funding to scale up an assertive outreach model across Wales to deliver a more robust and personalised form of support to all rough sleepers, focusing on moving them into permanent accommodation.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Rough sleeping: Provide personal budgets for rough sleepers that require high levels of support.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Rough sleeping: Increase investment in StreetLink and use learning from its recent evaluation to promote better use of the service.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Rough sleeping: Introduce a national reconnections framework and collect and publish data on long term outcomes for rough sleepers that are reconnected across Wales.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Rough sleeping: Abolish local connection criteria for rough sleepers and ensure it no longer presents a barrier to assistance for anyone threatened with or experiencing homelessness.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Rough sleeping: Where a person has died whilst homeless and living on the streets, ensure that a safeguarding review takes place.
Department: Health and Social Services
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Migrant Homelessness: Ensure that a properly supported voluntary reconnection service is provided for migrants who are homeless or at risk of homelessness and who want to explore the option of returning to their country of origin.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Migrant Homelessness: Make all EEA nationals with a right to reside eligible for statutory homelessness assistance.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Migrant Homelessness: Ensure that an assertive outreach model with an emphasis on access to legal, benefits and employment support is delivered to meet the needs of rough sleeping EEA nationals.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Migrant Homelessness: Ensure that short-term emergency accommodation is provided for migrants who are homeless, or at imminent risk of becoming homeless. This must be provided alongside access to immigration advice.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Migrant Homelessness: Issue guidance for local authorities clearly setting out the duties they owe to migrant households with no recourse to public funds.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Migrant Homelessness: At a minimum, ensure that all migrants at risk of becoming homeless within 56 days are eligible for support under the statutory duty to prevent homelessness.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Migrant Homelessness: Consider how best to grant access to the statutory homelessness system for all migrants.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Long-term
Housing First: Make Housing First the default option for anyone with complex needs who is experiencing homelessness.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing First: Appoint a national director for Housing First.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing First: Oversee the establishment of national and local targets for the delivery of Housing First tenancies.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing First: Collect and publish data on the fidelity and outcomes of Housing First projects.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Homelessness Legislation: Place a duty on local authorities to provide the housing support that has been identified as needed via a personalised housing plan.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Homelessness Legislation: Ensure housing associations give ‘reasonable preference’ to homeless households in their allocation policies.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Homelessness Legislation: Abolish intentionality in its current form and introduce a new test focusing on deliberate manipulation of the homelessness system.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Homelessness Legislation: Continue and improve the professional support and training programme for frontline homelessness officers.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Homelessness Legislation: Abolish the priority need criteria.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Longer-term
Homelessness Legislation: Ensure there is robust but proportionate regulation, monitoring and inspection of how local authorities, public bodies and social housing providers discharge their homelessness duties.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Longer-term
Homelessness Legislation: Ensure there is a more open system of individual reviews and appeals, and access to free or means tested legal advice.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Longer-term
Homelessness Legislation: Ensure that appropriate provisions are made for households who remain homeless after exhausting their entitlements under the homelessness statutory framework.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Longer-term
Housing: Increase the annual target for the delivery of new social rent homes to 4,000 a year, and continue to grow investment in social rented housing to deliver the equivalent of 4,000 homes a year, over a 15-year period.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing: Ensure that the rent setting framework for social housing delivers rents that are affordable to those on low earnings and in receipt of Housing Benefit.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing: Create a regulatory requirement that all registered providers of mainstream social housing set an annual guideline target for the minimum proportion of social lettings to homeless nominees and report on this publicly.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing: Ensure all social housing providers fulfil their responsibilities to co-operate with local authorities in meeting their homelessness duties and are encouraged to adopt best practice in supporting homeless people into social housing – including best practice in the use of pre-tenancy assessments.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing: Ensure local authorities and housing providers monitor and report publicly on their performance of providing settled homes for homeless people.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing: Amend the Welsh Government’s regulatory objectives to include safeguarding and promoting the interests of homeless people as well as current and future tenants (mirroring the objectives of the Scottish Housing Regulator).
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing: Place a statutory duty on local authorities to provide a tenancy relations service.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing: As part of Rent Smart Wales, require all private landlords and lettings agencies to submit annual data on the size (number of bedrooms) of their rental property and the level of rent they are charging.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing: Introduce a new standard private rented tenancy with no fixed term period where the landlord could only give notice by using specified grounds, and with limits on annual rent increases linked to an inflationary measure.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Longer-term
Housing: Review provision of private rented access schemes in Wales and learning from programmes across Great Britain to consider the case for creating national scheme provision for Wales. This should include a national rent deposit guarantee scheme to help increase access to the private rented sector.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Longer-term
Housing: Update national planning guidance to ensure it expressly addresses the need for new housing provision for single homeless adults, taking account of the availability of shared and one bedroom supply in the existing housing stock.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing: Local Housing Market Assessments should map existing provision for low income single adults and address the needs of single adults across the spectrum of support needs.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Housing: Require local authorities to ensure that the permanent mainstream housing needs of homeless people are taken into account through Local Housing Market Assessments.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Data: Redesign statutory homelessness data collection so that it follows individuals through their journey within the homelessness system.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Data: Introduce a new CHAIN-style system for recording rough sleeping that allows data sharing between the agencies working with people who are rough sleeping or at risk of rough sleeping. The system should also be linked to statutory homelessness data and people living in all forms of emergency accommodation.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Data: Establish data linkage systems that include data sets across health, homelessness, housing, criminal justice, substance misuse, welfare benefits, immigration and employment services.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Data: Commission the Centre for Homelessness Impact to fill gaps in evidence on homelessness prevention, as well as solutions for certain homelessness groups.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate
Data: Adopt a homelessness outcomes framework.
Department: Housing and Regeneration (Local Government and Public Services)
Nation: Wales
Immediate/longer-term: Immediate