Bartek Staniszewski is a researcher at Bright Blue.
Sadiq Khan, the incumbent Mayor of London, is prone to calling for policies that sound good rather than for policies that make sense. Last year, he called for rent controls, a measure that is popular in the eyes of the public, but nonsensical in light of the evidence. Now, housing is on his agenda again. The Mayor of London has pledged, by 2030, to eliminate rough sleeping in London “once and for all,” should he be re-elected. Alas, as good as such a pledge may sound, there is little hope of Khan meeting it.
Rough sleeping – the most tragic kind of homelessness, where one is forced to spend the night without a roof over their head – has increased significantly in London throughout Khan’s time in office. When he became Mayor, in May 2016, there were an estimated 2,700 people sleeping rough in the capital – a slight decrease on the previous year. Conversely, according to most recent data – from December 2023 – there were about 4,400 people sleeping rough in London. This means that, during Khan’s time as Mayor, London has seen an over 60 per cent increase in the number of people sleeping rough. This is not just a result of London’s population growth; that has increased by only about ten per cent in the same period.
All of this would suggest that, thus far, Khan has done exceptionally poorly as Mayor in preventing rough sleeping. This could be for one of two reasons: either he is incapable of reducing the number of rough sleepers, in which case his promise to end rough sleeping is an empty one; or rough sleeping is something he has not been too troubled by until now – only prioritising the issue as the mayoral election approaches.
In his defence, tackling rough sleeping in London is not just up to the Mayor. Rough sleeping is a national concern, so at least some of the blame could lie with the national government. Indeed, the Conservatives, in their 2019 manifesto, promised to end rough sleeping by the end of 2024 – a target that now seems very implausible, given that they have until the end of the year. With that said, they at least had a crack at it. The number of people sleeping rough in England has almost halved between 2019 and 2021, with the numbers increasing again in the years 2022 and 2023. The Conservative Government invested hundreds of millions of pounds into tackling rough sleeping across the UK. The Rough Sleeping Initiative alone – which is taking place alongside other rough sleeping prevention programmes, such as Housing First and the Homelessness Prevention Grant – is costing the Government £125 million a year, a serious financial commitment to tackling rough sleeping.
Yet, even with over 30 per cent of this money going towards London, the number of rough sleepers there has significantly increased under Khan’s mayorship, while the number of rough sleepers in England as a whole has slightly decreased within the same period. So, it is difficult to pin the blame on the Tories – Khan has done exceptionally poorly.
It also raises the question of why Khan thinks that, upon re-election, he can turn this around. His promise is to invest £10 million extra on tackling rough sleeping in London over the course of his next term as mayor – a number that pales in comparison with how much is already being spent in London on tackling rough sleeping.
Perhaps Khan is banking on the idea that Labour will win the next General Election and deliver a national strategy for tackling rough sleeping that will also help end rough sleeping in London. But, first, there is little reason to think that this will happen. While Labour’s leaders may have the right intentions where it comes to ending rough sleeping, so did the Conservatives who spearheaded the Government’s ‘Ending rough sleeping for good’ strategy. Labour does not seem to have any new ideas on the issue. The Shadow Minister for Homelessness, Mike Amesbury MP, has spoken of “ramping up supply, with a fundamental shift towards social housing available for genuinely affordable rent.” While “ramping up supply” would be helpful, this was also the ambition of the departing Conservative Government. The jury is out on whether Labour will manage to build more than the one million homes that the Conservatives have over the course of this Parliament. And, second, if it were thanks to a future Starmer Government that rough sleeping in London were to come to an end, it would make no difference whether or not Khan gets elected – only whether Starmer does.
Khan’s record on rough sleeping is poor. I hope that his intentions are genuine, and that he now appreciates how urgent it is to reduce the number of people sleeping rough on the streets of London. But, if he really wants to end rough sleeping, £10 more million will not cut it. His promise, in all likelihood, is just a PR exercise.
The post Bartek Staniszewski: Under Khan, rough sleeping in London has got worse. His promises lack credibility. appeared first on Conservative Home.
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Author: Bartek Staniszewski
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