Decision brings end to 200 years of law punishing people for trying to stay safe

Today, the UK Government has announced that it will be commencing repeal of the Vagrancy Act (1824) via the Crime and Policing Bill currently before the UK Parliament.

The announcement means that, in Spring next year and after more than 200 years, the Vagrancy Act will finally be fully repealed in England and Wales. Crisis considers this is a ‘landmark moment that will change lives’ and prevent thousands of people from being pushed away from safety and support. 

Initially designed to combat concerns over people wandering the country looking for work, and soldiers returning wounded from the Napoleonic wars, the Vagrancy Act has for more than two centuries enabled police across England and Wales to fine or imprison people for rough sleeping or begging [1]. Charities and campaigners have long argued that this does nothing to address the causes of why people are forced to beg or sleep rough, and pushes them further away from support and often into danger.

While the Act’s use has fallen since 2014, it has still been implemented with different police forces using the Act to differing degrees. The formal application of the Act has led to continued prosecutions, but the informal use and threat of prosecution under the Act continues to send people further away from the support they need.

Crisis has long campaigned for an end to this law. It has worked with organisations across the housing, homelessness and human rights sectors, and alongside police forces, lawyers and parliamentarians in parliaments in Westminster and Cardiff Bay [2].

This campaigning led both Houses of the Westminster Parliament to vote to repeal the Act in 2022, with clear support for its repeal in Wales' Senedd and from the Welsh Government. The repeal was included in the UK Government’s 2022 Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act. However, the government at the time insisted that it could not be fully implemented until replacement powers were in place. The new UK Government’s determination to set a date for repeal will finally bring about the end of the Act in England and Wales.

Matt Downie, chief executive of Crisis, said: 

“This is a landmark moment that will change lives and prevent thousands of people from being pushed into the shadows, away from safety. 

“For 200 years the Vagrancy Act has meant that people who are homeless are treated as criminals and second-class citizens. It has punished people for trying to stay safe and done nothing to address why people become homeless in the first place.  

“Ending the use of the Vagrancy Act recognises a shameful history of persecuting people for poverty and destitution, something that figures like William Wilberforce and Winston Churchill warned against in their opposition to the Act.  

“It is of great credit to the UK Government that they have shown such principled leadership in scrapping this pernicious Act. We hope this signals a completely different approach to helping people forced onto the streets and clears the way for a positive agenda that is about supporting people who desperately want to move on in life and fulfil their potential. We look forward to assisting the UK Government with their forthcoming homelessness strategy to do exactly that.” 

With the Act set for repeal next Spring, Crisis is calling for a focus on delivering increased and improved support and outreach services to help link people rough sleeping and/ or begging into support services and stable housing. It is also calling for the implementation of more trauma-informed approaches from police and criminal justice services that consider why people are on the streets. This will help tackle anti-social behaviour.

Recent UK Government statistics show the number of people sleeping rough across England is now 91% higher than it was three years ago and more than double than when data collection began in 2010. The number of people forced to sleep rough in London from January to March 2025 was 4,427 – an 8% rise from the same period last year. The number of people considered to be ‘living on the streets’ of London reached record levels from January to March 2025, rising 38% from the same period last year (511) to 706 people.

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Notes to editors

[1] Further background to the Vagrancy Act, taken from Crisis’ Scrap The Act report, 2019:

The origins of the Vagrancy Act pre-date 1824. It was part of a move to simplify centuries of existing vagrancy law into one Act, and driven largely by concerns around people in poverty who were wandering the country trying to make a living. This included soldiers who had returned from the Napoleonic wars. At the time, criminal justice was the main way to tackle vagrancy and police increasingly became the lead responders.

By 1906, a Departmental Committee noted that the Act in most part was a “measure simply of repression” that increased the number of people imprisoned. There have been attempts at reform and repeal over the following century, ranging from legal changes in the 1930s to the ‘End the Vagrancy Act’ campaign around 1990. Governments have partially relaxed the penalties and removed some of the offences, with new approaches in the 1990s and early 2000s reducing rough sleeping substantially. Additional anti-social behaviour legislation has also been passed.

While the Act’s use has fallen since 2014, it has still been used across police force areas with different police forces using the Act to differing degrees. The main formal use of the Act in the past decade has been against begging but prosecutions for all offences in the Act have still happened. More commonly, people on the streets report informal use of the Act (and other enforcement powers) to move them on or challenge behaviour without formal caution or arrest. This has antagonised the people affected, including support and outreach workers and some police themselves, because it does not address the root causes of the situation.

[2] The Scrap the Act campaign had a huge range of supporters, including Shelter Cymru, Homeless Link, Cymorth Cymru, St Mungo’s, the Wallich, Centrepoint and Liberty.