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The number of homeless rough sleepers in the UK is on a scale not seen since the 1990s and tackling the problem should be made ‘a prime ministerial priority’, says a new policy paper written by School of History and Cultures academics.

Dr David Christie, a Research Fellow in the School of History and Cultures, and Nicholas Crowson, Professor of Contemporary British History, identify numerous holistic strategies and policies in that were successfully employed by the previous Labour government and rapidly helped people to permanently escape the streets.

These include a new cross-cutting government body addressing homelessness, realistic and time-constrained targets, and comprehensive ring-fenced funding for local authorities to work in partnership with voluntary sector providers on prevention and support.

“It is clear that there is a great deal of New Labour’s homelessness programme that was highly effective and could easily be reintroduced in the contemporary context with adjustments made in the light of the lessons learned between 1999 and 2010,” Dr Christie and Professor Crowson conclude in the policy paper.

“To rapidly reduce the number of rough sleepers, Keir Starmer must firstly make it clear that the issue is a prime ministerial priority – only this will afford sufficient weight to ensure a sustained commitment by government and ensure the necessary cross-departmental co-operation.”

The policy paper came out of a ‘witness event’ organised by Professor Crowson at The Exchange in December that brought together key individuals from the New Labour era engaged with homelessness. Dr Christie recently provided evidence to parliamentary inquiry on tackling homelessness based on his doctoral thesis, Hand-up not a handout, which also informed the paper.