The Government’s long awaited National Plan to End Homelessness calls on strategic authorities to provide strong local leadership to better prevent homelessness. This raises a crucial question: how can regional bodies turn this ambition into practical action?

At the Centre for Homelessness Impact, we have been exploring this first hand through our Accelerator programmes. In London, Greater Manchester and Liverpool City Region, we are working with combined and local authorities to drive a preventative approach to homelessness in their respective regions. These programmes recognise that to end homelessness we need to do things differently. By leveraging regional strengths, we are supporting the development of delivery infrastructure to accelerate change.

Reflecting on our work so far in the Liverpool City Region highlights what strategic authorities need to do to not only meet, but go beyond, the expectations set out in the National Plan.

Driving a whole system preventative approach to homelessness

The National Plan to End Homelessness puts a necessary focus on prevention. Regional bodies are well-placed to take the strategic view necessary to drive the systemic change required for a prevention turn, free from immediate frontline pressures.

Liverpool City Region is embedding a whole-system approach to prevention - a shift from fragmented responses to coordinated action. A shared public health definition of prevention clarifies responsibility, and the Combined Authority’s powers over housing, employment and skills enable it to address the root causes of homelessness.

A key strand of the Accelerator programme is to build a better understanding about what works in homelessness prevention: a regional footprint allows for testing and learning on a scale that individual local authorities could not achieve. A focus of this will be to understand how we can prevent homelessness better in community settings, with people getting timely advice before a crisis hits. 

Setting the regional ambition, with accountability baked in

Political leadership can be especially influential in setting a clear regional ambition, as set out in the National Plan, and shaping local narrative: this has been evidenced in both Sadiq Khan’s and Andy Burnham’s commitments on rough sleeping.

However, ambition must be matched with accountability. In the Liverpool City Region, our work through the Accelerator programme has supported the development of a Shared Outcomes Framework and dashboard. This enables regional partners to understand whether ambitions are being met, what sits behind the data and supports more consistent, data-led decision making.

Regional authorities can secure the long-term, cross-party and cross-regional commitment essential to maintain a preventative approach to homelessness, holding this line in the face of both political shifts and the pressure of immediate crises. In this way, strategic authorities can do what individual local authorities often struggle to do alone: set shared ambition, agree outcomes, and hold the system to account.

‍Convening with purpose to strengthen delivery 

Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram set out a manifesto commitment to establish a cross-system homelessness Task Force in Liverpool City Region. The Accelerator programme has supported the region to understand the system conditions, membership and routines needed for this to deliver for residents. 

And while the regional work is to be led by the Combined Authority, delivery remains local. Effective convening means creating shared ownership to deliver on this prevention ambition. The Accelerator programme has been deliberately designed around local needs and strengths, enabling local leaders to shape the work, lead delivery, and drive change in their own places. At its best, this approach builds trust, clarifies roles, and allows learning to spread more quickly - helping the whole system move forward together.

Delivering regional specific initiatives

Regional initiatives should add value by providing infrastructure and capability that individual local authorities cannot easily sustain alone. A key example is developing a regional data and analytics backbone. Advanced data integration, analytics and learning capability are expensive to build and difficult to sustain independently in every local authority. 

A city-region approach allows core data and analytical foundations to be built once and reused across the system. This reduces duplication, supports greater consistency, and ensures that all local authorities can benefit from the same quality of insight. Just as importantly, it allows the Liverpool City Region to act deliberately as a learning system: testing, refining, and spreading what works across multiple places

Seizing the moment for regional leadership

Work in the Liverpool City Region shows the scale of the opportunity in the National Plan. Strategic authorities are uniquely placed to set long-term ambition, align partners around shared outcomes, invest in the infrastructure that underpins prevention, and act as learning systems that test and spread what works across place.

But this leadership does not happen automatically. Embedding prevention across the system requires deliberate choices, sustained political backing, and investment in the capacity and capability needed to deliver change at scale. It also depends on clear roles: regional leadership must complement, not replace, the vital work of local authorities and frontline services.

If supported to realise their full potential, strategic authorities can turn national ambition into local actions, driving a lasting shift towards prevention and better outcomes for people at risk of homelessness.

• Jenny Steele is Implementation Lead at the Centre for Homelessness Impact

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