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Crisis slams government plans to keep winter night shelters open in England
Homeless charity Crisis has attacked government plans to keep night shelters for rough sleepers open in England this winter.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) has today published guidance for night shelter providers on how to “safely” open their doors to rough sleepers, as the country braces itself for a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the coming months.
This is a change in the government’s approach from March, when concerns about the virus’ ability to spread in shelters and hostels led to their closure. Councils were then told to use coronavirus funding to find emergency accommodation for all rough sleepers and hostel users.
The government has also announced £10m of Cold Weather Payment funding for councils to help rough sleepers off the streets into self-contained accommodation over winter, and an additional £2m for faith and community groups to provide accommodation.
However, Crisis said keeping shelters open was “completely unacceptable” and that the funding “falls short of the bold action we need to keep people sleeping on our streets safe this winter”.
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MHCLG’s guidance was produced with input from Public Health England, Homeless Link and Housing Justice, and states that night shelters “should only be used as a last resort to protect against the risk to health and life of individuals remaining on the streets when other alternative options are unavailable, for example in very cold weather”.
Rough sleeping minister Kelly Tolhurst said: “Winter is clearly a dangerous time for people who sleep rough. These extra measures will help to protect this vulnerable group from life-threatening cold weather, as well as the risk of contracting COVID-19, and also provide them with support into move-on accommodation.”
Earlier this year, the government launched a £266m Next Step Accommodation Programme, intended to fund housing for rough sleepers taken off the streets earlier in the pandemic. The first allocations to councils were announced last month.
Figures released by MHCLG today show there were 10,566 people in emergency accommodation in late September, while 18,911 have moved into settled accommodation or another “rough sleeping pathway outside of temporary accommodation”.
Jon Sparkes, chief executive of Crisis, said: “Back in March, the government rightly decided that night shelters and hostels were not a safe environment for people during the pandemic.
“It’s completely unacceptable that this approach should now change as we go into winter when the threat remains the same.
“We must not force people to choose between freezing on the street or a shelter, when both needlessly put lives at risk.
“We urgently need the government to see sense on this matter and keep winter night shelters closed.
“They must instead provide councils with the crucial funding they need to provide everyone forced to sleep rough with safe, self-contained accommodation, as they did in March. Anything but this is risking lives.”
Crisis was among 17 homelessness and health organisations that wrote to the government last week asking for a repeat of the action taken on rough sleeping in the spring to protect people from the “double threat” of cold weather and coronavirus.
A recent study in influential medical journal The Lancet said that 266 deaths were avoided during the first wave of the pandemic in England due to the efforts to house homeless people in self-contained accommodation.
Dame Louise Casey, who led the ‘Everyone In’ programme, stepped down suddenly from her role as the government’s rough sleeping tsar in August and ministers have since refused to confirm whether she will be replaced.
Rick Henderson, chief executive of Homeless Link, said: “People should not be facing a choice between the cold streets or an unsafe night shelter.
“Traditional night shelters should only open as a last resort if self-contained accommodation is not a possibility.
“We welcome the operating principles published today, which will help make shelters open as safely as possible if they do become a necessity.”
