Homelessness: Funding

Gregory Campbell Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Thank you very much, Mr Vickers, for the chance to speak; it is a pleasure to serve under your chairship. I thank the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for leading today’s debate. He always leads on homelessness issues, whether in this Chamber or the other, and we thank him for all that he does.

Our housing provision differs across the United Kingdom: in the devolved nations it is different from the provision here in England. One issue I must highlight is the funding that we receive via the block grant, which is used to support the most central services in Northern Ireland. I believe that we need to improve the adequacy of that funding.

I echo the comments that my hon. Friend the Member for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart) made about veterans. Last winter, I sat out for about an hour in the cold weather—it was enough for me—with a veteran who was trying to highlight the very important issue of homelessness for veterans. I look forward to the Minister telling us what will be done across the United Kingdom.

In the Assembly back home, the Communities Minister Gordon Lyons has announced an additional £2.5 million funding package for the Northern Ireland Housing Executive to boost homelessness prevention services. Homelessness across Northern Ireland is rife; the stats are shocking. There is not a day in my office back home in Newtownards, or indeed in the Ballynahinch office, when we do not have homelessness brought to us as a constituency issue—especially within Ards and North Down, which continues to be such a popular area to live in. The figures speak for themselves. In Ards and North Down, 1,233 households are presenting as homeless and 898 households have been accepted as full-duty applicants; in other words, they were in priority need.

We hear so often what “homeless” means, but full-duty applicants are the priority and in many cases they have not intentionally made themselves homeless. People buy houses over the years, rent them out and then want to release their capital and be better off. We cannot blame them for doing that, but it does put pressure on homelessness teams.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the big problems in Northern Ireland and across the UK is the lack of affordable homes? Many families are finding that that is the difficulty with getting on the housing ladder, and there are social housing issues as well.

[Jim Shannon]

My hon. Friend is right. I have been presented with those cases in my office many times. People want to get a mortgage and cannot get one, because of the price of houses in Northern Ireland. In my constituency, they are the highest in all Northern Ireland; indeed, they are comparable to other parts of the United Kingdom.

I put on the record my thanks to my local housing team and particularly to the manager Eileen Thompson, to Irene May and to the many others who go the extra mile every day to help those in need. We do what we can with what we have, but because of the skyrocketing demand in my constituency and across the whole country, funding is not stretching far enough. Some 29,000 households in Northern Ireland have homeless status, and the policy approaches are not sufficient to meet the scale of demand. Although the Northern Ireland Executive receives money through the block grant, which is allocated accordingly, the figures show how much of an issue homelessness is, and there is more that we can do on home building.

My ask to the Minister—it is not her responsibility where the money goes, but maybe she can pass this on to the right person in the Cabinet—is a commitment to social housing delivery across the whole country and better integration with counterparts in the devolved nations, to ensure that we can support those who are in desperate need of safe and secure housing.

It is essential that Westminster provide stronger and more consistent support through fairer and more responsive Barnett consequentials. We have argued for many years that the Barnett consequentials do not reflect Northern Ireland’s needs. If they did, perhaps we could address the issue of temporary accommodation and homelessness, keep pace with demand and deliver long-term solutions. We must take the necessary steps to make the United Kingdom a safe and secure place to call home.