10 August 2026

How can we help the Prime Minister end rough sleeping for good?

Riverside news; Opinions and insight Blog post

This article was originally published in Inside Housing on 10 August 2026

We were delighted when Andy Burnham, our new prime minister, made ending rough sleeping his very first instruction upon walking into 10 Downing Street to begin his term in office.

This is significant: £340m of funding to deliver 1,200 homes and intensive support for 3,000 people affected by rough sleeping. There is a sense of urgency with our new prime minister, and this is welcomed and needed to tackle the scale of the humanitarian emergency we are seeing on streets across England.

My thoughts have focused on how we can do more to help the prime minister to end rough sleeping.

We know he is keen to expand Housing First and housing-led approaches, and we have experience of delivering these, including the UK’s first Housing First pilots in both Greater Manchester and Kent, as well as Housing First for Families in several other parts of the UK.

As an organisation with decades of experience delivering support and housing solutions to people who find themselves sleeping rough, we know that giving them a chance can help them thrive in a home environment, especially when they are given mental health support to overcome trauma, and life skills to sustain a tenancy.

We understand what works, as well as the obstacles. Extremely limited availability of mental health support for people with complex needs and the national shortage of affordable housing, particularly the chronic lack of one-bedroom flats, can hinder progress. It is therefore vital that a significant portion of the initial 1,200 homes should be single bedroom and the delivery of single-occupancy homes remains a firm focus.

The government is spending £2bn on temporary accommodation. While significant, much of this funding does not address the root causes of homelessness and can reduce the resources available for sustainable, long-term interventions. More funding may not always be the answer; spending existing resources more wisely is equally important.

Housing First is an important solution for those affected by entrenched rough sleeping and people with complex needs. However, when local authority budgets remain strained, affordable housing supply is challenging and rough-sleeping figures remain close to historic highs, it is also important to recognise that we need other solutions.

At a time when more than 9,000 people are regularly sleeping rough in the summer months across England and more than 134,000 homeless households are living in temporary accommodation, communal services remain crucial for helping us to deal with the pace and scale of the rough-sleeping and homelessness emergency we are facing.

Some customers respond better when they are surrounded by other people. Analysis of our customers shows that more than four-fifths of people have successfully moved on from homelessness after living in more traditional communal homelessness services.

We know the prime minister understands this, and Riverside has worked with him to deliver A Bed Every Night across Greater Manchester, which provides around 500 beds for people every night.

As long as the accommodation contributes to good well-being, then person-centred care – enabling people to recover from trauma and to build on their strengths – remains the most important determinant of success.

For a person’s journey away from the streets to be successful, it is critical that they are able to access the level of support they need. This should address the complexity of their individual needs. The government has already done excellent work on recruiting 8,500 additional mental health workers in less than two years.

There are also opportunities to create the preventative state the prime minister called for. Uprating Local Housing Allowance would prevent people from becoming homeless and sleeping rough at a time when fewer than one in 50 homes available for private rent are affordable to households on housing benefits.

The real long-term solution to this challenge is increasing the supply of social rent homes. Data consistently show the importance of social housing for ending homelessness, with more than 35,000 households ending their experience of homelessness by moving into a social home in 2024-25.

It is also vital for organisations like ours to end rough sleeping. To continue to do this, we need to ensure that commissioned services remain economically viable for the lifetime of the contract.

Ending a growing humanitarian crisis like rough sleeping requires us in the sector to match the sense of urgency the prime minister has called for. Adopting some of the ways of working we saw during ‘Everyone In’ would help to inject that urgency. As an example, by accelerating access to some services such as prescriptions and support to end substance use issues speedily, our staff were able to help bring about a noticeable change in a person’s physical and psychological well-being more quickly.

Everyone In highlighted the need for joined-up working to ensure that people affected by rough sleeping can receive all the support they need in one place. It also showed that anything is possible with political will.

Riverside and our partners built on the success of Everyone In to create the Street Engagement Hub in Manchester. This brings needs assessment, physical and mental health support, harm reduction, same-day prescribing, assistance with benefits, housing and adult social care connections together in one place.

If we are to tackle rough sleeping at pace and scale, then we need more Street Engagement Hub-style solutions to bring more services together under one roof.

The prime minister has said he wants to bring back hope. At Riverside and throughout the sector, we stand ready to act urgently to bring back hope to thousands of people and their families affected by rough sleeping.

Let’s make it happen.

Paul Dolan, Group Chief Executive, Riverside