The Kerslake Commission on Homelessness and Rough Sleeping has published its final report.   The Commission was launched at the end of March 2021, to bring together a wide range of stakeholders to learn and examine the lessons from the Government’s Everyone In rough sleeping initiative in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, so that the progress of the past 18 months can be embedded, improved and sustained in the long term.

The overall conclusions of the report are:

“The ‘Everyone In’ emergency response showed what can be achieved where there is political impetus, a shared overarching goal, and funding to match. However, as many of the submissions to the Commission have stressed, although there were positives, and drastic changes to the ways of working during the pandemic, at times this was in spite of the system, not because of it.

The emergency response must now be commuted to the ‘new normal’, with prevention, alleviation and recovery at the core of it”.

In total the report makes 44 recommendations for central government, the Spending Review, local authorities, homelessness organisations, housing providers and health organisations.

The recommendations fall under the headings of:

• Better strategy, policy and delivery
• Roles of accommodation and service models and
• Preventing inequalities and unfairness.