Rising rough sleeping in England has been labelled a “source of national shame” as official figures showed the number of people spending the night on the streets or in tents rose for the second year running.
The figures, which reveal rough sleeping increased in all regions of England, in effect confirm the government has failed to meet its 2019 manifesto promise to end rough sleeping before the next general election.
An estimated 3,898 people slept rough in 2023, an annual increase of 27% – the largest annual rise since 2015 and more than double (120%) the number of people recorded as sleeping rough in 2010, when records began.
Refugees controversially evicted from Home Office hotels with just seven days’ notice appear to have significantly boosted the rise in rough sleeping, with separate data showing 469 people who had left asylum support, many with right to remain, slept on the streets in December, up from 48 in May.
In a sign of the wider housing crisis, numbers of homeless people in local authority-provided temporary accommodation have risen to record levels. About 109,000 households in England – including 142,000 children – were in emergency housing between June and September, up 10% on the same period the previous year.
Several district councils have warned rapidly escalating temporary accommodation costs could push them into bankruptcy. Meanwhile, there are fears that a number of county councils making big cuts to homelessness prevention budgets could push up rough sleeping numbers in towns and rural areas over the next few months.
Rough sleeping was most highly concentrated in London, where numbers rose 32% to 1,132, and the south-east. The highest number of rough sleepers in 2023 were in Westminster (277) and Camden (121), while the biggest year-on-year increases were in Kingston upon Hull (290%), Ealing (121%), Redbridge (89%) and Leeds (32%).
Annual estimates of rough sleeping are based on a single-night autumn snapshot of people bedding down or about to bed down on the streets, or in tents, doorways or encampments. The estimates do not include people sofa surfing or in temporary shelters. Charities say the figures underplay the scale of the problem.
The government will take comfort that the 2023 figures represent a decrease of 9% since 2019, and an 18% decrease on 2017, when the highest annual rough sleeping figures of 4,751 were recorded. The government announced £220m of additional funding for homelessness prevention on Wednesday.
The pledge to end the “blight of rough sleeping” was a 2019 general election Tory manifesto promise, given shape in a 2022 strategy backed with £2bn of funding and accompanied by a declaration that government had “a moral imperative to end rough sleeping and to end it for good”.
A Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities spokesperson said: “While we have made good progress and rough sleeping remains below pre-pandemic levels, there is more work to be done to meet our ambition to end it entirely and we will continue to work with local authorities to help people off the streets for good.”
Matt Downie, the chief executive of the charity Crisis, said: “The scale of rough sleeping is now a source of national shame. It is a sign of extreme inequality and must prompt a rethink at the highest levels of government.”
The Homeless Link charity warned rough sleeping was likely to continue to rise in parts of Kent, Devon, Hampshire, Leicestershire and Essex, where county councils are making major cuts from April to housing-related support services for vulnerable tenants.
Suffolk county council decommissioned the bulk of its charity-run support services for vulnerable tenants in January, stripping out £3m in funding. From April, up to 700 accommodation spaces across the county will be at risk in a scenario described by local district councils as “catastrophic.”
Ipswich Housing Action Group (Ihag), a charity that runs 51 bed spaces across 14 properties in the town, used its £300,000 a year county council grant to provide one-to-one tenancy support – money, health and life skills advice – to vulnerable people who would otherwise be at risk of homelessness.
Many of those bed spaces are now likely to disappear, said Ihag’s chief executive, Jools Ramsey-Palmer. “We will see more people sleeping on the streets of Ipswich, but we will see an even bigger number of ‘hidden homeless’ people who are sofa surfing and sleeping in cars.”
Suffolk council, which must make £65m of budget cuts from April, said it took its care and support duties seriously and did not want to see any increase in homelessness or rough sleeping. But it added: “We simply do not have the money to fund non-statutory services like housing-related support as we have in the past.”
Campaigners said ministers had failed to tackle the causes of homelessness, including soaring rents, inadequate housing benefit support, and a lack of affordable housing. They have also failed to meet a 2019 pledge to end “no fault” evictions – a major cause of homelessness.
Homeless Link’s director of social change, Fiona Colley, said: “Ask anyone in the homelessness sector and they’ll tell you that this rise [in rough sleeping] was entirely predictable and entirely preventable.”
