1.1    The Mayor has committed to tackling homelessness and, in particular, noted that the rise in rough sleeping over recent years is a growing source of shame that we have a “moral imperative” to stop. In his draft London Housing Strategy, he pledges to support rough sleepers off the streets as quickly and sustainably as possible, with the key aim of ensuring a route off the streets for every single rough sleeper in London. 
1.2    The Mayor funds and commissions a range of pan-London rough sleeping services and other initiatives. These are services for rough sleepers, or initiatives to tackle rough sleeping, that cannot or would not be provided at a London borough level, as they are pan-London or multi-borough in their remit. A budget of £33.8 million for these services was approved (through MD1532) for the period 1 April 2016 to 31 March 2020. 
1.3    The shape and nature of these services and initiatives are underpinned by the pan-London Rough Sleeping Commissioning Framework. This includes a priority ‘to work with boroughs and partners to meet the physical and mental health needs of rough sleepers’. The Homeless Health Peer Advocacy (HHPA) project assists in meeting this priority by using peer mentors to ensure that rough sleepers attend medical appointments and sustain health treatment and by providing health promotion activities to rough sleepers. In addition, the Healthy London Partnership Homelessness Programme’s commissioning guidance for Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) , published at the end of last year, recommends that London CCGs should commission peer support to help homeless people access healthcare and identifies HHPA as a model of good practice. 

1.4    The GLA has grant-funded Groundswell to provide this unique project since 2012, in which time it has won the Andy Ludlow Homelessness Award in 2014  and the GSK Impact Award in 2016 . The HHPA has enabled rough sleepers to attend 1,662 health appointments and 4,500 people have attended the health promotion in-reach sessions in this time. This funding has enabled the service to be rolled out across London. During this time Groundswell has levered in a total of £1.7 million of match funding as result of GLA investment. By the end of 2016/17, the project was funded by and operational in three London boroughs (Hackney, Wandsworth and Hounslow) and five CCGs (covering Westminster, Hammersmith and Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea, Tower Hamlets and Camden). During 2016/17, the GLA contributed £50,000 of grant funding and the boroughs/CCGs £461,000. The GLA’s share of funding towards the project fell from ten per cent to 8.5 per cent during the year, as Groundswell levered in funding from additional organisations.

1.5    With the support needs of those on the streets remaining at a high level (with 77 per cent of those on streets having an alcohol, drug and/or mental health need), there is a strong case for ongoing GLA investment to enable roll out of the project across the capital to continue. A further three years’ of GLA grant-funding would enable Groundswell to expand into another six London boroughs, resulting in the project working in a total of 14 boroughs across London. In 2017/18, it is envisaged that the London Boroughs of Greenwich and Southwark would join the project, as would Lambeth CCG and Guys and St Thomas’s Charity. 
1.6    It had, until recently, been expected that seed funding from 2017/18 onwards for this expansion would be available from the London Homeless Health Partnership (LHHP), but contrary to expectations the LHHP does not have any budget for this purpose.