The Labour party has now settled into government and is in full swing with the Labour party conference giving us hints about their upcoming budget and policy plans. With this in mind, we wrote a letter to Manchester Central’s MP Lucy Powell, sharing our ideas, concerns, and hopes that we have for upcoming decisions to be made in government, as well as inviting Lucy to come and visit our on-the-ground work in homelessness. The letter can be read here.

We expressed our excitement at hearing and seeing lots of focus being put on more house building - we have recognised for a long time that this is essential to alleviating restraints and barriers in the homelessness system. However, we have yet to see focus, clarity, and commitment to how this new housing will be affordable and appropriate for our service users, and how people in vulnerable positions will be safeguarded in the private rented sector until houses are built.

We also felt that there is a distinct lack of focus on policy and budgeting commitments in regards to homelessness. Many of our service users struggle with multiple complex needs that have to be addressed by not just the housing system, but the health and social care, justice, welfare, and other such systems. Without a robust, cross-departmental approach to homelessness, that includes the force and effort that is currently being put into housing, we fear that more houses will be built but the appropriate support and trauma-informed environments that our service users can thrive in will remain the same - limited and often out of reach.

Our letter expressed six asks of our MP that reflect what we want to see changed to address the above issues:

1. To advocate to parliament and housing ministers for a swift set up of the cross-departmental homelessness unit with clear targets of how homelessness will be addressed in the housing crisis as a multi-disciplinary issue.

2. To advocate in the autumn budget and spring spending review for homelessness funding to be adequately allocated and to be ring fenced and long-term.

3. To advocate for regular consultations and collaborations with people of lived experience of homelessness and charities supporting those through homelessness in major decisions regarding housing, homelessness, and affordability.

4. To advocate for a defined target of affordable housing which can be used to hold developers and local authorities to account, and that this matches and changes with the current economic climate.

5. To advocate for a focus on removing or suspending Right to Buy and how it will be appropriately implemented to local authorities.

6. To advocate for the Renters (Reform) Bill to be implemented sooner to protect private renters currently in the sector.

This letter comes at an appropriate time in the political calendar as the autumn budget approaches on the 30th of October. Over the next few weeks we will be posting and sharing what we expect to see in the budget, and what we, as Barnabus, would hope to see. We hope to see the above asks reflected in the budgeting allocations to come.

There will be much more revealed as the date approaches, but there are a few things we are expecting to see from the October budget:

• ‘Tough choices’ - there has been consistent talk of expecting harsh actions - cuts and tax raises - in order to raise enough funds to carry out the budget and rectify the ‘£22 billion black hole’ .

• Tax hikes - tax raises are expected, however Labour have assured that this will not impact ‘working people’. Income tax, National Insurance, and VAT will not be increased.

• Multi-year spending - the budget will be followed by a spending review in spring. Chancellor Rachel Reeves has made some changes to the fiscal calendar that make room for budgets and spending plans to be more structured, certain, long-term, and giving time for appropriate policies and strategies to be formed around those budgets. 

• Homelessness - as of yet we are not aware of any specific homelessness measures to be announced. Inside Housing have said that they believe there will be no new details on the next five years of the Affordable Homes Programme until 2025, however there is some rumour that some money might be given to the programme for the last year of it’s current funding cycle.

Although there is still much to be revealed from the autumn budget, there are enough indications for us to think about what we hope to see, and how the budget may impact our work. Whilst we are aware of the limits of the ‘black hole’ we still want to advocate for a budget that upholds the commitment to not return us to a time of austerity.

The main area that we hope to see addressed is in regards to social support. Homelessness is a symptom of a wider issue of inequality and poverty. Cutting social areas such as health, education, and welfare pushes more people into situations of crisis. It is often these situations that result in people living in poverty and at high risk of homelessness. We would hope to see the budget move away from cutting these areas of support. We believe that a preventative approach that betters people’s opportunities to move out of poverty and prevent homelessness is a sincere way to resolve homelessness. However this cannot be done if cuts are being made in other areas which lead to poorer outcomes and opportunities for individuals.

There has also been an increase in rhetoric that returns to the unfounded claims that most people on benefits are benefits scroungers, and that this justifies cutting and reducing benefits. This is incredibly dangerous as many of the people we support rely on benefits as they are unable to work and struggle with multiple complexities that mean they are not ready to enter the workforce, or need more support to do so. At the moment, the amount of benefits that people receive does not match the rising cost of essentials. Whilst we try to promote independence, our service users are often faced with the barrier that they simply cannot afford to live on the benefits they receive, but they are unable to work. We hope that the budget allows for an understanding of the need for benefits to match the current economic climate and to ensure that it covers the cost of essentials for people to live.

We will stay up to date with the news surrounding the October budget so please keep an eye out on our social media for any further updates! We hope to share with you what we are expecting to see, how the budget is important to our work, and what we hope the outcomes of the autumn budget will be!