"Londoners are being failed on a massive scale": statement from Glass Door Homeless Charity

This morning, the Greater London Authority’s Combined Homelessness and Information Network (CHAIN) published its annual report on rough sleeping.

According to the report, between April 2024 and March 2025 outreach teams in London recorded 13,231 people sleeping rough, a 10% increase compared to the previous year and the highest number on record.

Matthew Falk, Director of Services at Glass Door Homeless Charity, had the following to say: 

“These numbers reflect what we see every day in our services: rough sleeping in London is at record levels and remains a profound injustice. Alongside our casework service, we run the country’s largest network of emergency night shelters, which just experienced its busiest season on record. More than 1,600 people were referred for a space, far more than we could accommodate and 84% of them were sleeping rough. 

There is no way of avoiding the reality that Londoners are being failed on a massive scale, with thousands of people in our city having nowhere to sleep other than the street. 

Given this appalling situation, we have welcomed several recent developments. These include the Mayor of London’s Rough Sleeping Plan of Action, which aims to end rough sleeping in the capital by 2030 through a focus on prevention and joined-up services; the £39 billion investment in affordable housing announced in the government’s Spending Review; and the planned repeal of the Vagrancy Act, which currently criminalises rough sleeping. 

We still have significant concerns some of the government’s other policies and plans, particularly the plans to restrict eligibility for Personal Independence Payments (PIP) - which will push more people into homelessness. 

If the government is serious about tackling rough sleeping and other forms of homelessness in London, it must be prepared to rethink how it supports society’s most vulnerable, especially people living with disabilities, while also making bold and sustained investments in social housing.”