- 29/01/2025
- Posted by: Canterbury Labour
- Categories: 2025 News, Housing, Latest News, News, Services

New funding announced by the Labour Government will provide a huge boost in tackling rough sleeping in the Canterbury district. The additional funding comes as Ministers treble emergency support this winter.
Canterbury City Council will receive a total of £173,724 to help more rough sleepers off the streets and provide warm beds this winter thanks to new emergency funding given to local councils.
The Rough Sleeping Winter Pressures Funding, a government scheme to increase the use of emergency accommodation for rough sleepers, will be tripled from £10million to £30 million. The cash will go directly into areas with record levels of rough sleeping, ultimately saving lives and supporting thousands of vulnerable people in society facing the cold weather.
Over 280 councils will now have extra resources at their disposal to support frontline workers providing vital services on the ground, which will see more people sleeping rough into safe and secure accommodation with warm beds, hot meals and medical treatment.
The new funding will also continue supporting specialist programmes for vulnerable groups sleeping rough including veterans, care leavers and victims of domestic abuse. This is alongside giving life changing support to people who have slept rough long-term, with critical outreach staff helping to address substance abuse and provide employment opportunities.
Labour’s Pip Hazelton, Cabinet Member for Housing on Canterbury City Council said:
“Under the Conservatives rough sleeping reached record highs – that represents a tragedy for the individuals involved, a disgrace for a wealthy country like ours and a failure that puts lives at risks and drains taxpayers’ resources.
“But Labour is fighting back. We are tackling the housing crisis, building more homes, and through this huge boost to emergency funding we are ensuring that as many as possible of those on the streets have somewhere to go, a warm bed to sleep in at night, and somewhere to feel safe.
“That includes buying more social and affordable homes in our district – already 67 local families are moving into new homes in Broad Oak – and we are beginning the process of increasing our temporary accommodation for local families who need housing.“We won’t turn Britain around overnight, but through new support to Canterbury like this, change has begun – and we will get this country back on track.”
A sharp rise in rough sleeping in recent years represents a complete failure in the housing crisis inherited by the government, with almost 360,000 households approaching their council for help with homelessness over the last year.
Today’s emergency cash injection is just one branch of the government’s Plan for Change to raise living standards for working people and families, deliver the biggest boost in affordable and social housing in a generation, and strengthen rights and protections for tenants.
It builds on the largest-ever investment in homelessness prevention services of almost £1 billion for this year, including over £185 million for the Rough Sleeping Prevention and Recovery Grant, so councils can better prioritise when providing warm beds and shelter for people at risk, or experiencing, rough sleeping.
This is alongside more than £37 million for the Rough Sleeping Accommodation Programme that will cover ongoing costs to help rough sleepers into longer term housing and secure more specialist staff supporting their mental health and substance abuse problems.
One of the leading causes of homelessness, Section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions, will be abolished for new and existing tenancies through the landmark Renters’ RightsBill which is now another step closer to becoming law following last week’s third reading.
Through overdue reforms to the Right to Buy scheme councils can now retain all receipts from sales to build and buy more homes as well as receiving an additional £450million last year to secure and create homes for families at risk of homelessness.
Government investment in housing has now increased to £5 billion for this year, including an extra £500 million for the existing Affordable Homes Programme to build tens of thousands of affordable homes across the country.