By Joe Locker, Local Democracy Reporter
A homelessness charity is expecting to cut jobs and slash support after the Government’s autumn budget added £1.8m to its annual costs.
Framework, based in Nottingham, offers housing, employment and rough sleeping support to thousands of people across Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Derbyshire, and Sheffield.
Chief executive Andrew Redfern says the charity has been trying to counter a “spiralling” homelessness crisis, largely due to austerity, the Covid pandemic and the rising costs of living.
The latest figures show 739 different people were found sleeping rough on Nottingham’s streets alone over the past year, while the number of households put up in temporary accommodation has risen from 349 households over the 12 months to April 2020, to 776 households in the 12 months to April 2024.
Mr Redfern told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) the charity’s work to tackle the crisis has been made more difficult by the Labour Government’s budget.
The budget, announced by Chancellor Rachel Reeves at the end of October, has added £1.8m to Framework’s annual costs.
This is due to changes in how much organisations must pay in National Insurance (NI) contributions, as well as an increase to the national living wage.
“Straight away it plunged us into a deficit situation which we cannot sustain,” Mr Redfern said.
“We have to find some ways to correct that.”
Framework is now anticipating it will have to make cuts to 25 full-time or equivalent job roles, while removing some ‘add-ons’ to services, such as clinical psychologists and specialist social workers attached to its street outreach service.
“Unfortunately the budget does seem to be taking us in precisely the wrong direction,” Mr Redfern said.
“We have been lobbying hard over a number of years both to the last government and the new government about the importance of supported housing.
“We believe supported housing helps reduce pressure on the criminal justice system, health service, bring more people into employment and education.
“We’ve been arguing that this needs to be properly resourced. So far, under the current Government, there has been no change except for this huge increase in NI.
“The effect on the charitable sector across the whole country as a whole is about £1.4bn, which is enormous.”
Mr Redfern said he has been making representations alongside other charities and organisations to reinstate support similar to the ‘Supporting People’ programme.
This £1.7bn scheme, which Mr Redfern says equated to around a third of one per cent of overall public expenditure, helped significantly reduce homelessness over a decade ago.
“The impact was enormous,” he said.
“It wasn’t just about getting rough sleeping down to virtually zero, it also provided options for homeless people in other situations like not being securely housed.
“It was a way to prevent worsening of mental health and drug and alcohol issues. It was very effective for not in the scheme of things very much money.
“We would hope a Labour Government would see the benefits of bringing that back, so far they haven’t responded to our representations, but we will continue to make them.”
Another city homelessness charity, Emmanuel House, based in Goose Gate, is also reporting additional costs as a result of the budget.
While not as substantial as Framework’s, Emmanuel House chief executive, Denis Tully, says National Insurance increases will add around £23,000 to the wage bill.
“This will impact on the budget that the Board of Trustees considered in September,” he told the LDRS.
A Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesperson said: “We have inherited devastating levels of homelessness, and we are taking action to get back on track to end this issue for good, which is why in the budget we took the total spending on reducing homelessness to nearly £1 billion in 2025/26.
“Reducing social inequalities is also vital to fix this problem. Our balanced and proportionate approach will help us raise the money needed to fix public services so that they can benefit everyone, as well as fund the delivery of up to 5,000 social homes.”
The department said increasing employer National Insurance contributions will raise more than £25 billion to help fund the NHS and protect working people’s payslips from higher taxes.
