Budget to add £432m to rough sleeping funding, taking the total to £874m

The government will set aside a further £432m for services for people sleeping rough in Wednesday's Budget, Downing Street confirmed on Sunday evening. The money roughly doubles the funding committed since the summer and takes the total to £874m.

The announcement is one of the few Budget measures the government has put on the record in advance. It was published by the Prime Minister's Office alongside a summit at Downing Street that brought together charities, housing providers, businesses and local leaders.

What the money pays for

The first £442m was committed to get people off the streets over the coming winter, with outreach work, emergency bedspaces and health support. That funding was set to run until March 2027. The new £432m carries the programme past that point and through to the end of the current Parliament.

According to the government, it will keep frontline services operating and pay for the next step, helping people move out of emergency places and into settled accommodation. That second stage is usually the harder and more expensive part, because it depends on a supply of homes that people can afford to stay in.

Specialist outreach teams and new bedspaces are already running in Coventry, the government said, with more provision due to open in Plymouth and the London borough of Camden over the coming weeks. The Prime Minister said he was confident everyone sleeping rough would be offered a route off the street, or wider support, before Christmas.

Pledges from outside government

Several organisations made commitments at the summit. The National Housing Federation said housing associations would bring forward at least 2,000 potential homes and bedspaces, including properties that are currently empty. The Julia Rausing Trust committed £10m, the Morrisons Foundation pledged £500,000 through its food fund, and the Henry Smith Foundation offered £500,000 of match funding alongside Birmingham City Council for work with people sleeping rough in the city.

The scale of the task

The most recent official count, carried out between October and November 2025, found 4,793 people sleeping rough in England on a typical night. That was up 3% on the year before, the fourth annual rise in a row, and the highest figure since the current counting method began in 2010. London accounted for 1,277 people, more than a quarter of the total.

The count is a single-night estimate, and charities say it understates the number of people who sleep rough at some point over a year.

What happens next

The full allocation will be set out in the Budget documents on Wednesday 28 October. Those should show how the money is split between emergency provision and help with longer-term housing in each year. The next official rough sleeping snapshot, covering this autumn, is due early next year and will be the first measure of whether the winter push has reduced the numbers.