National Plan to End Homelessness

Lord Bird Excerpts

Tuesday 16th December 2025 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Bird]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of whether new funding allocations to local authorities are sufficient to deliver the prevention commitments in the National Plan to End Homelessness.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

My Lords, last week the Government launched their £3.5 billion national plan to end homelessness, a bold initiative informed by the voices of those with lived experience of homelessness and rough sleeping, as well as councils, mayors and homelessness organisations. Over £3 billion of that funding will go to local government through the local government finance settlement, with prevention at its core. The strategy is designed to tackle the root causes of homelessness alongside immediate action to help those experiencing homelessness now. It will bring an end to the current tension that forces councils to choose between investment in prevention and meeting temporary accommodation costs.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

With £2.8 billion spent on temporary accommodation in the last year by local authorities, forcing many of them towards bankruptcy, the £2.5 billion the Government have allocated, even if you look upon it as trying to cover the costs, is 28% short of the actual cost of temporary accommodation for local authorities. Are the Government going to do anything about allocating enough resources so that we do not have this situation where people are left on the streets because there is no temporary accommodation, and do not have the problem of our local authorities going bankrupt?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am grateful for all the work the noble Lord has done in this area. The Government are very aware of the challenges councils face due to the rising demand for temporary accommodation; it has been growing in recent years and is a real challenge for them. We are committed to considering the best way to sustainably fund good-quality temporary accommodation and reduce reliance on poor-quality provision. To support this, we are working across government, including with our colleagues in the DWP, in the interministerial group on homelessness and rough sleeping to explore the impacts of subsidy rates on local authorities. This week we will announce the local government finance settlement—the first multi-year settlement in a decade—giving councils the certainty they have repeatedly asked for to enable more spending on prevention and less on crisis management. That is the answer to this in the long term.