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News in Brief : Issue 161

April 01 2026

News in brief by the Pavement Team

Rough figures

Government figures released in late February show England rough sleeping figures have reached a record high. The numbers, gathered by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, reveal the number of people sleeping rough on a single night in England in November 2025 rose to a record high of 4,793, compared to 4,667 for the same period lin 2024. Bonnie Williams, Chief Executive of Housing Justice, commented: “The underlying pressures that drive homelessness have not disappeared and while rough sleeping is the most visible form of homelessness, it is only part of the picture. The record numbers of households in temporary accommodation show just how many families are living in limbo.” The figure tallied in November 2025 is 42 more people than England’s previous record high in 2017.


Footy fundraiser

The Street Soccer Foundation, a UK charity using football to help tackle youth homelessness, announced the start of the 2026 season of its flagship The Big Goal campaign in late February. The Big Goal is a national social impact campaign, directly funding places on the charity’s Street Soccer Academy through a fundraising football tournament, an initiative which enables young people experiencing homelessness, unemployment or disadvantage to access a 12-week programme combining football coaching with personal development, mentoring and employability support. This year, 60 businesses and organisations have signed up to take part in the campaign. In the previous two editions, The Big Goal has raised more than £250,000 to support the expansion of the Street Soccer Academy programme across the UK. The football fixtures take place over April and May, before culminating in a final held at St George’s Park (home to England’s national men's, women's and para football teams) on 11 June.



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Festival news: One Roof, Old Diorama Arts Centre's (ODAC) jam-packed arts programme for artists with lived experience of homelessness, held its annual two‑week festival from 19th to 30th January, running Mondays to Fridays. This year’s festival, titled Bricks and Mortar, provided guests with a mix of arts workshops interwoven with mental health and wellbeing sessions, alongside an open studio. Artists worked on numerous projects, both individual and collective, before presenting works at the festival’s closing ceremony exhibition at ODAC, London on 27 February. Artworks including paintings and films were on show to visitors, alongside speeches by the artists and performances for One Roof’s regular scratch nights – nights dedicated to providing space for artists with lived experience of homelessness to present new works. 


Hypocrisy corner

A London philanthropist, claiming to be committed to solving homelessness in the capital, moved to evict hundreds of people from their homes recently. In late February, London Centric learned that Asif Aziz’s Criterion Capital business planned to remove hundreds of Londoners – including some who were marking the holy month of Ramadan – from their homes. The mass “no-fault” evictions of private tenants, which sources say are scheduled to be handily finished before the government’s pesky Renters’ Rights Act comes into effect, are taking place on an unprecedented scale. The evictions are going ahead regardless of whether the residents are up-to-date with their rent or have kept the property in good condition. Aziz, who recently moved to low-tax Abu Dhabi, runs Criterion Capital alongside other members of his family and has courted controversy over recent years for the business’s landlord practices, which include trying to shut down historic London cinemas and renting properties to tax-evading American candy stores (currently blighting London’s West End). 


Temporary pain

The Local Government Association (LGA) has projected the cost to councils of providing temporary accommodation for homeless people in England will more than double by 2029–30 to almost £4bn. According to the Guardian, the LGA also found that the annual cost to councils of temporary accommodation was set to grow by 65% in the next five years, rising from nearly £360m to £595m. Since 2017–18, local authorities across England had spent almost £1.5bn more on temporary accommodation than had been reimbursed in housing benefit from the government. That figure is predicted to jump to £3.9bn in the next four years, the LGA said. Tom Hunt, the chair of the LGA’s inclusive growth committee and leader of Sheffield city council, spelled out the alarming financial gaps local authorities face: “Councils are caught in a vicious cycle of ever-increasing temporary accommodation costs versus static rates they receive back to cover their costs.”


SWEPt up

New findings by the Museum of Homelessness show homeless people continue to be excluded from life-saving provision during extreme weather. On 5 March 2026, the Museum of Homelessness released the second edition of its investigation Severe Weather Emergency 2022–2024, which scrutinises how councils and services are adapting to increasingly extreme weather. The investigation found, among other revelations, that a form of gatekeeping by local authorities was common practice, with 42% of councils using a verification system as a pre-condition to access Severe Weather Emergency Protocol support.



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Town hall: On a mid February evening in Camden, London Streets Kitchen held a meeting to discuss to the council’s appraoch to homelessness and what local organisations, charities and individuals can do to effect change. The meeting was held at St Michael’s Church in Camden and was organised by the Streets Kitchen team with support from SK Legal. A panel presented the situation on the ground at 'Camden: a homeless and housing crisis intensifying', inviting guests present at the meeting to suggest ideas and discuss ways to move forward. Politicians, charity workers and people experiencing homelessness were all in attendance. The night ended on a positive note, a reaffirming of the commitment of local groups to work together and hold the local authorities to account, as well as support people on the streets and experiencing all forms of homelessness.


Dying homeless

Data from the National Records of Scotland (NRS), released in early March, revealed an estimated 231 people died while experiencing homelessness in Scotland in 2024. The NRS figures were slightly lower than the previous year, during which 242 deaths were recorded, but were higher than when records began in 2017. Before the records were released, the Scottish government had found there were 2,092 households reporting a household member experiencing rough sleeping between 1 April to 30 September 2025 across the country.
According to the NRS report, around half (49%) of the people experiencing homelessness who died in 2024 were aged under 45. Responding to the data, Maeve McGoldrick, head of policy and communications at Crisis Scotland, said: “we [Crisis Scotland] are calling on all political parties to commit to ending homelessness by 2040 in their upcoming manifestos.”


Housing news

The housing association Home Group Scotland, working with the local authorities in Edinburgh and Glasgow, has secured a batch of new homes for homeless families in Scotland. Altogether, 16 families are set to move into new homes in the cities: six families in South Queensferry, while 10 families have moved into homes in Tillycairn, Glasgow. An additional eight homes in Farrier Fields, Edinburgh, were scheduled to be made available to families in March 2026. The welcomed Scottish Housing News report comes amidst a severe housing crisis in Scotland. In Edinburgh, for example, homelessness among children and families had risen 148% in the five years leading up to 2024, Shelter Scotland figures show. 


Complaints

The Glasgow Times reported in late February that the owner of the Scotsman Group has written to Glasgow City Council issuing a “strong formal objection” to Homeless Project Scotland's (HPS) retrospective planning application for the use of a building on Glassford Street as a homeless facility. HPS has applied for permission to run a 24-hour facility, with its application papers outlining plans to run a soup kitchen on the ground floor along with a night shelter in the basement. The formal complaint to the council had a redacted name at the end of the letter, however, it states it is from “the owner and operator of the Scotsman Group,” which runs several bars and restaurants in the Merchant City district. The letter’s listed reasons for objecting to the HPS application include: “harm to the economic function and commercial stability of the city centre”, “overconcentration of similar uses” and “adverse impact on business operations and staff safety”. 


Firefighter

A homeless man who attempted to extinguish a fire in a Glasgow shop says the massive explosion from the inferno “nearly killed him.” Footage from the dramtic scene shows James Welch, 51, charging towards a blazing vape shop on Union Street armed with a fire extinguisher, with thick smoke pouring from the building. Two members of the public rushed to drag him away from the danger and moments later a huge explosion burst from the building. The fire raged from the evening of Sunday, 9 March into the next morning, with firefighters battling to contain the devastation. Smoke was seen billowing across the city centre, as the fire destroyed premises on Gordon Street, including historic Victorian buildings. Welch told the Daily Record: “I wasn't scared for my life, I couldn't let people die. I tried to get into the shop by which point I was dragged away from behind… Those men in turn saved my life."


Recovery plan

A trauma-informed recovery hub for people experiencing homelessness is scheduled to open in Glasgow. The Lighthouse Project will be based at Kingston Halls and offer guests counselling, structured activities and employability support to help rebuild lives. The Talbot Association, the city's largest provider of homeless accommodation, is behind the project, which is hoped to be open this year after fundraising is complete. In the meantime, The Talbot Association is inviting community support to help make the project a reality and extend its impact. A key feature of the hub will be a partnership with Glasgow Clyde College, which will see trainee counsellors working alongside structured activities The scheme will also offer arts, mindfulness and digital inclusion. Currently The Talbot Association operates six supported accommodation sites in Glasgow, serving approximately 200,000 meals each year, according to The National.

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April – May 2026 : Working together

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