If re-elected Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan has pledged to eliminate rough sleeping in the capital by 2030.
Labour’s candidate for City Hall, who is running for a record third term, vowed to “condemn the scandal of rough sleeping to history” in the capital in a major campaign promise.
Khan said: “A vote for Labour on May 2 is a vote to end the indignity, fear and isolation felt by those forced to endure a life on the street once and for all.”
The policy, he said, would see a further £10m invested to fund an expanded network of new Ending Homelessness Hubs across the city.
They will help an additional 1,700 rough sleepers off the streets each year, by the end of Khan’s third term, providing specialist support to help people rebuild their lives.
City Hall will unveil a new action plan for ending rough sleeping, with the hubs at its centre. The plan also includes working more closely with all London boroughs and its homelessness charities.
Khan vowed to “work side-by-side with the next Labour government to overcome the social and economic injustices which leave our society scarred and our people with no place to call home”.
It comes as Labour is widely expected to form the next government, with a general election anticipated in the second half of this year.
In a speech this morning, Khan will ask Londoners to “remember how rough sleeping was all but eradicated” by the last Labour government.
According to government figures, rough sleeping increased by 120 per cent from 2010, when the Conservatives first took office, to 2023, despite their 2019 manifesto pledge to stop it.
City Hall says the Greater London Authority (GLA)’s rough sleeping budget is now £36.3m, more than four times the £8.45m a year it was when Khan took office.
But Conservative mayoral candidate Susan Hall warned Khan’s record on housebuilding could hamper his efforts to address homelessness.
She said: “This is yet another promise Khan will fail to deliver, given his appalling record on housing.
“Khan has only started building four per cent of the affordable homes he promised in the latest programme, and it is his failure that has kept people stuck in temporary accommodation and made it harder to get rough sleepers off the streets.
“We cannot solve homelessness without solving the housing crisis, which is why I have pledged to build more family homes Londoners can afford.”