Everything you need to know about Labour's homelessness strategy

Homelessness has surged across England in recent years and Labour has promised a long-term strategy to tackle the issue.

The long-awaited homelessness strategy is due imminently with ministers promising that it would arrive before the end of 2025.

A cabinet reshuffle in September saw both the homelessness minister and the housing secretary change with Rushanara Ali and Angela Rayner swapped for Alison McGovern and Steve Reed respectively.

That sparked fears that the strategy would be delayed until 2026. Reed told the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee in November that “with new ministers coming in to post we need to take time to see where we are”.

But Big Issue understands the strategy is due to be published soon. So here’s everything we know about the strategy and what is likely to be in it.

What is the homelessness strategy?

Staggeringly, England does not have an existing strategy to tackle homelessness in the long-term, unlike Wales and Scotland.

The former Conservative government set out a rough sleeping strategy in 2022 as part of its failed bid to end street homelessness by 2024.

But a wider-reaching strategy to guide how to end all forms of homelessness – from sleeping rough on the streets to temporary accommodation to sofa surfing – over the long-term in England has not yet materialised.

What is the extent of homelessness in England?

Homelessness is at a record-high in England with the number of families living in temporary accommodation, in particular, pushing local authority budgets to the brink of bankruptcy in some cases.

The latest official statistics show 330,410 households were owed support to prevent or relieve homelessness after contacting their council for help in 2024-25. That’s a 0.9% increase on the previous year.

But it’s the number of households living in temporary accommodation that is surging. A total of 132,410 households were living in temporary accommodation as of June 2025 – 7.6% higher than a year ago. That includes 172,420 children.

The official rough sleeping snapshot revealed 4,667 people were homeless on England’s streets in autumn 2024 based on single-night counts and estimates by frontline workers and local authorities. That’s the highest number since 2017.

The London-only Combined Homelessness and Information Network (Chain) figures are considered to be more accurate than the official one-night count. 

The most recent annual count showed 13,231 rough sleepers spotted on London’s streets between April 2024 and March 2025. The highest point on record, a 10% increase on the previous year’s total as well as 63% higher than a decade ago.

Homelessness is costly. The Labour government is spending £1 billion a year on tackling homelessness and rough sleeping while councils in England collectively spent £2.8bn a year putting households in temporary accommodation.

What is going to be in the homelessness strategy?

Since coming into power, Labour ministers have spoken on the need to focus on prevention to reduce the number of people falling into homelessness in the first place.

Labour’s child poverty strategy, published in early December, included measures designed to reduce the number of children living in temporary accommodations and promised more details in the homelessness strategy.

Measures announced in the child poverty strategy included ending the use of bed and breakfast accommodation for families beyond the six-week legal limit. An emergency reduction pilot across 20 local authorities with the highest use of B&Bs will be extended for three years.

Labour will also ban new mothers from being discharged into unsuitable homes while a new legal duty will inform GPs and teachers when a child is placed in temporary accommodation.

There was also a pledge to invest £950 million in delivering 5,000 high-quality homes for temporary accommodation.

The Vagrancy Act, which has criminalised rough sleeping and begging for more than 200 years, is also set to be scrapped next year.

Expect more detail on these measures as well as plans to reduce rough sleeping, tackle drug and alcohol addiction and much more.

The homelessness strategy is also cross-government so should set out how departments work with each other. While the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government leads on homelessness, the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department of Health and Social Care and others across government are also impacted.

Read more:

• Homelessness minister Alison McGovern: ‘Labour will stop homeless kids growing up in B&Bs’
• The challenge of counting hidden homelessness in Britain
• Here’s what to do if you see a homeless person

What should be in the homelessness strategy?

Housing First currently faces an uncertain future in England and there have been calls for the model to form a “central component” of the strategy.

The model, which has had significant success in Finland, sees rough sleepers given a home alongside the support they need to keep it.

The Westminster government has been operating three pilots in England – in Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and Liverpool City Region – in recent years.

But Homeless Link’s Alex Smith recently told Big Issue that there was “a danger of losing Housing First altogether”.

Labour MP Paula Barker wrote an open letter in early December calling for Housing First to feature prominently in the strategy.

Meanwhile, the Local Government Association (LGA) has called for local housing allowance rates to be increased to cover the bottom 30% of private rented homes on the market. 

At the autumn budget, the government opted to freeze local housing allowance rates that determine how much housing benefit low-income renters receive to help them cover rents.

The subsidy rate is the amount of money councils are reimbursed after paying housing benefit. It has been frozen at 2011 levels, leaving councils £240m worse off.

The LGA has also called for at least 100,000 new social homes to be built each year.

Crisis chief executive Matt Downie told Big Issue earlier this year that the strategy should “set the vision, set the direction” and should show “how we’re going to end homelessness through housing”.

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