Homelessness and Emergency Housing
Rough Sleeping
The National Rough Sleeping Programme aims to offer a route off the street for everyone before Christmas 2026, with longer-term settled accommodation and intensive support for people who have experienced long-term rough sleeping.
The programme aims are:
- Provide rapid support and accommodation options for people sleeping rough or at immediate risk of rough sleeping, moving as many people as possible off the streets and into accommodation before Christmas 2026.
- Deliver targeted wraparound support that supports people experiencing long term rough sleeping and the most complex needs to move off the streets and sustain their accommodation.
- Strengthen local systems to prevent and resolve rough sleeping.
- Increase the supply of suitable, stable accommodation with dedicated support for people experiencing long-term rough sleeping, to reduce repeat and persistent rough sleeping over time.
- Strengthen local pathways into long-term accommodation, reducing repeat and persistent rough sleeping over time.
Our Vision
Our vision is that nobody should have to sleep rough in Ribble Valley.
- Recognition that rough sleeping can be less visible in a rural borough and difficult to tackle when affordability of housing is a key issue.
- Clear commitment to prevention as well as intervention.
- Importance of housing, health, social care, criminal justice and voluntary/community partners in addressing the issue.
- Listening to people with lived experience.
We will work with our partners to prevent rough sleeping wherever possible and, where it does occur, respond quickly so that it is rare, short and non-recurring. We recognise that rough sleeping is not simply a housing issue. People may face overlapping challenges involving physical and mental health, trauma, substance use, relationship breakdown, offending, poverty and access to suitable accommodation. Our approach will therefore be person-centred, trauma-informed and based on partnership working. We will focus not only on providing an immediate route away from the street, but on supporting people to secure and sustain a settled home.
Read our full Rough Sleeping Strategy.