The National Plan to End Homelessness 2025 is the government’s latest homelessness strategy. At the NHF, we’re pleased the strategy focuses on prevention and cross-departmental working, as well as the recognition of supported housing’s important role in preventing and alleviating homelessness. This page explains what the strategy means for our members working to end homelessness.
Why is the strategy important for housing associations?
Housing associations play a key role in ending homelessness. A social home provides secure, affordable housing for people and families across the country who cannot afford private rent. Supported housing helps people facing complex needs or crisis, like veterans and people with mental health conditions.
At the NHF, we know that a financially secure and sustainable supported housing sector is key to solving the homelessness crisis. Our sector is committed to working in partnership with the government to build on the opportunities the strategy provides and find solutions to the challenges facing supported housing providers across the country. If we can do this, we can make sure they can reduce homelessness and help end it for good.
The strategy focusses on these key themes:
- Long-term sustainable change to address the root causes of homelessness.
- Medium-term change to move away from crisis and put prevention at the heart of public services.
- Immediate action on temporary accommodation, particularly B&B use.
- Action to address rough sleeping, focussed particularly on those who have slept on the streets the longest.
- Encouraging greater accountability, for central government, local government, providers and partners.
What funding did the strategy announce?
From 2026/27, the government is providing over £3.6bn in funding over the next three years to act towards ending homelessness and rough sleeping. These are the key funding announcements made by the strategy:
Homelessness, Rough Sleeping and Domestic Abuse Grant
The Homelessness, Rough Sleeping and Domestic Abuse Grant will be worth more than £2.7bn over the three years of the multi-year settlement and will bring together the following funding streams into a single consolidated grant. Temporary accommodation funding has been separated out to establish dedicated ringfenced funds for prevention.
This grant includes:
- £1.1bn for the Prevention, Relief and Staffing element of the Homelessness Prevention Grant (HPG). This includes a £45m uplift on provisional allocations to increase capacity for local authorities to deliver prevention activities.
- £879m for the Rough Sleeping Prevention and Recovery Grant (RSPARG) and Rough Sleeping Accommodation Programme (RSAP).
- £49.7m of new burdens funding for the Renters’ Rights Act. This is additional funding that is being consolidated into this grant to cover additional costs for homelessness services from the Renters’ Rights Act.
- £499m for the Domestic Abuse Safe Accommodation Grant. The provisional multi-year settlement allocations for the Domestic Abuse Safe Accommodation Duty were based on flat cash value of £480m. The final settlement included the £19m uplift that the government announced on Monday 15 December 2025.
- £159m for targeted funding for supported housing support services, to selected local areas. This includes a £35m uplift of funding that has been consolidated since the provisional settlement. Funding will be distributed to local authorities, who have been identified as the top 40 in terms of need, using the Single Homelessness and Rough Sleeping formula.
Further government supporting guidance for the grant can be found here. More information about the consolidated funding breakdowns by local authority area can be found here.
Further funding
Alongside the Homelessness, Rough Sleeping and Domestic Abuse Grant, the government has also made the following funding available through the strategy:
- £37m Ending Homelessness in Communities Fund in VCFS organisations to enable the sector to strengthen community-based support, transform day services, help individuals live independently and prevent homelessness and rough sleeping.
- £15m Long-Term Rough Sleeping Innovation Programme will target the 28 areas facing the greatest long term rough sleeping pressures, including London.
- £12m National Workforce Programme (NWP) for 2026-29, to strengthen and support the capacity, capability and career pathway opportunities for the homelessness and rough sleeping sector’s workforce.
- £50m top-up to the Homelessness Prevention Grant for local authorities in year 2025/26.
- £30m to expand the Emergency Accommodation Reduction Programme and scale up pilots to tackle a wide range of poor practice, including B&B and unsuitable out-of-area placements.
- £12m of funding to continue the Reducing Veteran Homelessness programme for a further three years.
Other changes to the local government funding landscape include:
- £969m overall (£323m per year) of temporary accommodation funding will be rolled into the Revenue Support Grant, which was previously part of the Homelessness Prevention Grant.
- £185m from 2026-29 and continue to fund the Rough Sleeping Drug and Alcohol Treatment Programme, including expanding to a small number of additional councils, enabling the delivery of targeted and specialist drug and alcohol treatment and support.
- £950m for round four of the Local Housing Authority Fund, allowing councils to acquire temporary accommodation that is better value for money and better quality, supporting homeless families, alongside Afghan and Ukrainian households.
- £114m will be provided over the next three years to support strategic authorities to set the regional ambition on homelessness. £800,000 has been allocated to help newer local authorities tackle homelessness in 2025/26.
What key policy announcements did the strategy make?
The strategy introduced national headline targets, including:
- Reiterating the 1.5 million new homes target – emphasising the role of housing in ending homelessness.
- Increasing the proportion of people who are supported to stay in their own home or helped to find alternative accommodation when they approach their local council for support.
- Eliminating the use of Bed and Breakfast accommodation for families, other than very short-term use in emergencies.
- Halving the number of people experiencing long-term rough sleeping.
It also brought in new cross-government targets to reduce homelessness from prisons, care and hospital, including:
- A 50% reduction in the number of people who become homeless on their first night out of prison. An overall increase by the end of this Parliament in the number of prison leavers in settled accommodation three months after they leave prison.
- Developing a cross-government action plan to reduce the proportion of care leavers under 25 who are experiencing homelessness, with measurable targets by the end of this Parliament.
- No one who is eligible for homelessness assistance discharged to the street after a hospital stay.
The strategy made other policy announcements, including:
- A review of how effectively social housing providers use their properties, including exploring ways to reduce empty homes and improving access to the right-sized homes.
- A commitment to working with partners to update statutory guidance on social housing allocations, including considering levers to require social housing landlords to rehouse statutory homelessness households, including legislation if necessary.
- Following consultation, government will update the tenure Direction to the Regulator of Social Housing, reiterating the government’s expectation that providers are transparent with residents about their approach to granting and ending tenancies, as well supporting residents to find alternative accommodation before an eviction takes place. The government will also support providers with best practice on tenancy sustainment.
- The government will consult on a new ‘duty to collaborate’ for key public services, requiring public institutions to work together to prevent homelessness and support those who are at crisis point.
- The government will publish new support guidance, alongside consulting on the Care Act 2014 statutory guidance, to help staff working across housing, social care and safeguarding services respond to common challenges.
- The government will introduce a new duty for councils to provide Staying Close support for people up to age 25 where welfare requires it, helping care leavers to find and keep suitable accommodation and access wider support.
- The government will work with councils on good practice on how councils can provide rent deposit support to young people, including through Rent Guarantor schemes, starting with care leavers and extending to other young people.
- The government will extend funding for Op FORTITUDE and deliver VALOUR to ensure veterans needs are being met.
- Launching a new National Workforce Programme to ensure the homelessness workforce has the right skills and capacity to deliver.
- Councils will be required to develop local targets and publish annual action plans to improve performance against the Local Outcomes Framework metrics.
- Develop toolkits to support local authorities plan, assess and deliver services with greater consistency and confidence. Toolkits will be on:
- National youth Homelessness Prevention.
- Single Homelessness and Complex Needs.
- Homelessness Prevention and Support for Survivors of Domestic Abuse.
- Outreach.
- Temporary Accommodation.
- Supported Housing.
How is the NHF supporting the Plan?
The strategy was published with an Action Plan, which outlines commitments that the government and partners have made in delivering long-term change.
Within this Action Plan, the NHF has committed to collecting and sharing case studies and examples of best practice with and on behalf of members to demonstrate how they are committed to reducing homelessness and driving continuous improvement through:
- Providing a range of housing services that prevent homelessness, including general needs homes and supported housing across the country.
- Taking a proactive approach to helping residents sustain their tenancies.
- Partnership working with local authorities to prevent homelessness, including adopting a collaborative approach to make sure properties and support packages meet the needs of prospective tenants.
If you have any good practice examples of work your organisation is doing to help residents stay in their homes, please let us know and we can help you put a case study together.
Our members views are also represented by the NHF on the government’s Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Expert Group, providing knowledge, analysis and challenge to support and monitor the delivery of the National Plan and responses to emerging issues. The NHF will continue to work closely with government officials to engage on the strategy and the various elements that are still yet to come forward.
