“The blame can’t just lie with councils though,” he said. “Decades of chronic underfunding from central government have forced many to make impossible decisions around who gets what support. The new government must urgently address this.”
This week the County Councils Network said that without a multi-billion pound boost to their funding they would be reduced to “little more than care services”, for which they have a statutory duty.
“It is unacceptable that people, often at their most vulnerable, are experiencing homelessness – and we want to make sure they can find a secure home,” a spokesperson for the MHCLG said. “Councils have a duty to ensure vulnerable people are not left without a roof over their heads and we have committed to working with them and local leaders to develop a long-term strategy to end homelessness once and for all.”
Adam Hug, the housing spokesperson for the Local Government Association, said councils were “doing their best to meet their duties to vulnerable young people at a time when they are under mounting pressure to find suitable homes for an ever-increasing number of people”.
He said paying for temporary accommodation for 113,000 households cost councils £1.75bn a year.
The problem of illegal gatekeeping comes as several homelessness charities, including St Mungo’s and Shelter, warned that services to get and keep people off the streets were “at significant risk” if a £500m funding stream from central government to local authorities, due to end in March, was not extended.
The 2022 rough sleeping initiative has helped fund about a third of St Mungo’s services in London – costing nearly £18m and including a housing first scheme that prioritises getting rough sleepers into accommodation. The charities want the funding to be extended for three years at the budget on 30 October.
