Winter Night Shelters: End of season insights 2025-26

Glass Door Homeless Charity has been operating emergency winter night shelters for over 20 years. We run the UK's largest network of open access winter night shelters for people experiencing homelessness. Open access means that no matter who you are or where you come from, you can turn to us for support. 

We launched our emergency night shelter service on 10th November 2025, offering 105 spaces per night across three night shelter circuits – one in Kensington and Chelsea, Hammersmith and Fulham, and Wandsworth. The 30th March 2026 marked the closing of our night shelters until next winter. Our caseworkers will continue to support shelter guests that engaged with our year-round casework service. 

Each circuit offered up to 35 people a safe place to sleep each night, as well as a hot dinner and breakfast the next morning, and access to our casework service to help guests build a route out of homelessness. 

Our shelters were operated by shelter staff and 912 volunteers, as well as our year-round Casework and Operations Team, allowing us to deliver our shelter provision seven days a week in each of the three rotating circuits over the last 20 weeks. For the third year running, our shelters were split between a mixed-gender circuit, men’s circuit and women’s circuit, and we also held a weekly women’s drop-in casework session to support our women’s shelter guests. 

We will share more in-depth analysis of the data and insight we collected from our shelter provision in the coming months, but here is a quick overview of our 2025-26 night shelter season: 

• We received 1,373 referrals 

• 491 people stayed in the shelters, of whom: 

• 286 were men and 197 were women (58% men, 40% women, 2% other) 

• 77% were previously sleeping rough 

• The youngest was 18 and the oldest 78 

• 39% were under the age of 35 

• The average stay was 24.6 nights 

Although the rise of homelessness in London, continued cost-of-living crisis and the ever-growing challenge to find affordable and quality housing in London puts great pressure on our caseworkers, we’re celebrating these positive outcomes: 

• 363 (74%) engaged with caseworkers 

• 126 guests have been moved to more permanent housing so far: 66 men, 58 women and 2 other 

• 39 guests have received financial support 

• 32 guests have been connected with health services 

• 69% of women preferred to be in the women’s shelter, showing the value of our women’s services 

Although shelters have closed, our year-round casework team will continue to support the 363 guests who engaged to build their route out of homelessness.