The Mayor's Rough Sleeping Plan of Action 2025

The Mayor has committed to end rough sleeping by 2030, working with partners including central government, London Councils, boroughs and civil society.

This is an ambitious goal that will require all partners in the capital, and in central government, to play their part.  

The new Rough Sleeping Plan of Action sets the framework for how the Mayor and partners will measure and track progress towards achieving it.

Tackling the emergency on our streets, while addressing the underlying root causes, requires a new approach:

• building on the foundations we have already laid
• the joint working we developed during the pandemic
• alignment between central government, the GLA and boroughs. 

This work brings together those responsible for delivering services across the capital, to provide a more joined-up and strategic approach to meeting Londoners’ needs. This ensures that any Londoner at risk of homelessness can more easily access help no matter where in London they live, or which service they contact first.

Our improved model of prevention means those at risk will get the support they need when they need it, so no one has to sleep rough to access services.

These changes will mean we can focus our rough sleeping resources on those who are the hardest to reach, and have the most complex needs – and we can make their time on the streets brief and non-recurrent. 

The key initiatives that the Mayor will undertake in collaboration with partners are:

• Provide leadership to join together services and make sure people can get the help they need, as early and as simply as possible.
  This includes work with boroughs and key partners to ensure people don’t have to sleep rough to access services. We have set a target to replace the current practice of ‘verifying’ that someone is sleeping rough before they can access support, with an approach based on an assessment of people’s needs, by 2028. 
• Prevent rough sleeping wherever possible, and improve early identification for people at risk by:
  • building a new network of Ending Homelessness Hubs
  • establishing a new phoneline to prevent rough sleeping
  • putting more support workers and volunteers in community settings (such as day centres and food banks.

  These measures will provide early advice and safe places for professionals to assess people, and put tailored plans in place to prevent them from having to sleep on the streets.  

• Deliver rapid, sustainable routes away from the streets, by delivering a ‘Homes off the Streets’ programme to provide long-term housing and support options. This scheme will start with funding the renovation of up to 500 empty social homes in need of refurbishment, for people at risk of rough sleeping. These will be offered on a long-term basis and combined with tailored support, to help people with the most significant needs to rebuild their lives. 

The Plan of Action sets out that these should be just the first steps of a wider strategic approach to tackling homelessness and rough sleeping.

In the plan, the Mayor also calls on the government to match his ambition, including: 

• To fund local councils properly, and ensure adequate resources for essential services.
• To rebuild a strong safety net to catch people when life throws them off course.
• And to fix the foundations of this crisis, by delivering the biggest boost to social and affordable housing in a generation.