Section: Party Manifesto
Labour pledges 'moral mission' to save lives this Christmas and end rough sleeping
Posted 05.12.19
Source: Further reading
As part of major new plans to fulfil the Labour Party's manifesto pledge to end rough sleeping within five years, Labour has announced:
- A £600 million Modern Hostels Fund for good quality homeless accommodation, with 5,000 additional bed spaces to take people off the streets and help them rebuild their lives.
- £200 million 'Hostels Transformation Fund' to turn existing hostels into places where homeless people can turn their lives around.
- A new £100 million a year scheme for emergency winter shelter and support to save lives, starting this winter, and get people off the streets in the cold weather.
- 4,000 additional 'Housing First' homes - a pioneering scheme to get some rough sleepers straight off the streets and into permanent housing, and 4,000 new permanent 'move-on' homes, ring-fenced for rough sleepers moving out of hostel accommodation.
This package will be backed up with an additional £1 billion a year earmarked from council budgets to pay for staffing and support, and funding to re-link local housing allowance with local rents - major new pledges to tackle homelessness contained in the Labour manifesto.
*****
Party manifesto pledges to tackle homelessness
Posted 04.12.19
In our November edition we looked at the manifesto pledges of both Labour and Conservative on housing - there is a link to those articles at the bottom of this page.
With only just over a week to polling day, we look at the manifesto commitments of Labour and Conservative for tackling homelessness.
The Labour Party Manifesto commits to:
- Tackling the root causes of rising homelessness with more affordable homes and stronger rights for renters.
- Ending rough sleeping within five years, with a national plan driven by a prime minister-led taskforce.
- Expanding and upgrading hostels, turning them into places where people can turn their lives around.
- Making available 8,000 additional homes for people with a history of rough sleeping.
- Tackling the wider causes of homelessness, raising the Local Housing Allowance in line with the 30th percentile of local rents, and earmarking an additional £1 billion a year for councils' homelessness services.
- Introducing a new national levy on second homes used as holiday homes to help deal with the homelessness crisis.
- Ensuring extra shelters and support are in place this winter in all areas.
- Repealing the Vagrancy Act and amending antisocial behaviour legislation to stop the law being used against people because they are homeless.
Source: Labour Party manifesto: Page 80.
The Conservative Party Manifesto commits to:
- Renewing the Affordable Homes Programme, in order to support the delivery of hundreds of thousands of affordable homes - highlighted in the manifesto as key to efforts to prevent people from falling into homelessness.
- Fully enforcing the Homelessness Reduction Act.
- Ending the blight of rough sleeping by the end of the next Parliament by expanding successful pilots and programmes, such as the Rough Sleeping Initiative and Housing First.
- Working to bring together local services to meet the health and housing needs of people sleeping on the streets.
Source: Conservative Party manifesto: Page 30.
*****
Recent Headlines
Headlines in this section last month:
- Labour pledges the biggest council house building programme for decades
- Conservatives focus on home ownership with its building targets and commitment to continuing Right to Buy
*****
Return to this month's headlines
