APPG Meets Homelessness Minister to Discuss National Plan

Today the APPG for Ending Homelessness met with Minister Alison McGovern MP to discuss the National Plan to End Homelessness and heard the views of our Steering Group on the strengths of the plan as well as where there needs to be improvement if the Government is to fulfil its pledge to get us back on track to ending homelessness. 

The APPG also welcomed the attendance of the Chair of the APPG for Temporary Accommodation, Siobhain McDonagh MP at the meeting.  

This meeting is especially urgent as only last week the latest statistics on homelessness revealed a record high number of people (4,793) slept rough in England in Autumn 2025, and yet another record high of households living in temporary accommodation (134,769 households), including 175,990 children. The figure for children is the 11th record high in a row.  

There was a lot of goodwill towards the plan as an historic first for England which matches the APPGs calls to focus on preventing homelessness, collate funding into multiannual pots, provide inclusive, person-centred support services, and continue the role of the Lived Experience Forum in advising Government.  

The plan was published in December last year and includes an Outcomes Framework for local government to improve services, new national targets as well as £3.5bn in funding over three years, including a new consolidated Homelessness, Rough Sleeping and Domestic Abuse grant. 

There is also a commitment to introduce a new Duty to Collaborate to prevent homelessness for six key Departments, The Ministry of Justice, Home Office, the Department for Education, Department for Health and Social Care, Ministry of Defence and Department of Work and Pensions. In addition, there are immediate targets to be met for some institutions to prevent homelessness, including hospitals and prisons, which has been strongly welcomed.  

However, it remains to be seen how Departments will be held accountable for delivering on their targets or whether the people using services will see changes due to the new Duty and targets when there is little extra money, and no route for the national rollout of the service changes that we already know work, such as Housing First.  

Furthermore, to effectively prevent homelessness everyone needs access to a home they can afford. Yet, social house building is below the 90,000 homes a year we need and just 2.7% of homes for rent across Britain are affordable on housing benefit for private renters, which still remains frozen, a real-terms cut in support. The Government needs to fix this to make real progress.  

Finally, the role of the Home Office in pushing people into homelessness remained unaddressed with no requirement to reduce homelessness on move-on from asylum accommodation or to address the impact of No Recourse to Public Funds conditions on rates of homelessness.    

The APPG is also happy to announce that JRF as the newest member of the Steering Group. JRF said in response;  

"JRF is joining the Steering Group for the APPG for Ending Homelessness at a time when homelessness and rough sleeping are at record highs, private renters face exorbitant costs, and the supply of social homes remains far too low. We will be supporting the APPG’s efforts to secure decent and affordable homes for every family and build a future where homelessness is no longer an inevitability."