Savage Cuts Will Leave People Sleeping Rough on the Streets

If you remember the 1980s you'll recall the sight of rough sleepers on the streets of towns and cities. It would be stretching it to say visible homelessness has entirely disappeared in recent years, but the problem has been massively ameliorated, not least by targeted investment in housing through the £1.6bn Supporting People (SP) programme. Indeed, as SP funding melts away, its funding ringfence removed, and its infrastructure corroded by cuts made on an astonishing scale and at terrifying speed by desperate councils, it increasingly looks like another lost and unacknowledged Labour success story. In Nottinghamshire, for example, the Tory-run county council's proposal to slash SP by 65% from April – drawn up, unbelievably, even before the chancellor George Osborne had delivered his comprehensive spending review bombshell last October – has since been compounded by Labour-controlled Nottingham city council's own plans for 45% cuts to SP. Other councils, too, are planning big reductions in SP funding. Read more on The Guardian website, and read Grant Shapps’ reply on the posting immediately above this.