Robert Jenrick – 2021 Statement on the Rough Sleeping Accommodation Programme Funding
The statement made by Robert Jenrick, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, in the House of Commons on 18 March 2021.
Today, the Government are launching the next phase of the rough sleeping accommodation programme. Councils across England are invited to bid for a share of funding totalling £212 million for 2021-22 to 2023-24 to deliver move-on homes for rough sleepers. These homes will be a national asset to support vulnerable people, and high-quality support services will be provided alongside to help vulnerable people move on from rough sleeping.
This funding is part of the £433 million rough sleeping accommodation programme available over the lifetime of this Parliament to deliver 6,000 new homes for rough sleepers, announced by the Government in May 2020. This represents the largest ever investment in move-on accommodation. Today’s announcement builds on the first year of the programme, in which the Government allocated more than £150 million for move-on accommodation for rough sleepers, as well as investing in high-quality support over the next three years, so that vulnerable people helped through the programme can maintain their tenancies and move on from rough sleeping.
Further information on future years of the programme is available in the fund’s prospectus, available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/rough-sleeping-accommodation-programme-2021-24.
The Government have made clear that no one should be without a roof over their head, which is why we have committed to end rough sleeping. That is also why, including this programme, we have spent £700 million in 2020-21 and are spending over £750 million over the next financial year to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping.
This programme builds on the Government’s unprecedented Everyone In initiative, which has so far supported 37,000 individuals during the pandemic, with more than 26,000 already successfully moved on to longer-term accommodation. Together with our pledge to fully enforce the Homelessness Reduction Act, this funding demonstrates our commitment to making the most of this opportunity to transform the lives of the some of the most vulnerable in society, and to ending rough sleeping for good.
