Let me tell you about a man who’d spent eight years sleeping rough. Despite living in the UK for 24 years, he was deemed ineligible for publicly funded support due to his immigration status. Then he tried something different. Within one month he was granted leave to remain with recourse to public funds.

How? He took part in a new approach that offers short-term housing, holistic support and an opportunity to receive specialist immigration advice.

His story is just one example of the life-changing impact it has had for some individuals who have spent months, years and even decades stuck in a situation forcing them to rely on emergency rough sleeping services because of restrictions or uncertainties about their immigration status.

The Accommodation and Immigration Advice project is led by the Centre for Homelessness Impact and funded by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. It is one of a series of trials to test new ways to reduce homelessness and end rough sleeping - the Test & Learn and Systems-wide Evaluation programme. 

Whether it’s the 65 year old grandmother who found herself sleeping in a park after an argument at home, the 21 year old blocked from getting into university, or the 45 year old whose employers have been taking advantage of his precarious situation for the last 10 years; there hasn't been a ‘typical’ person who’s been supported through the project. What they do have in common though is the shared experiences of navigating a system that  excludes them from support, creating destitution, fear and uncertainty. 

The current rules around who can access help from mainstream council housing teams, claim Universal Credit, have a right to rent and a right to work, exclude many people who are navigating the immigration system. The complexity of the immigration rules and the legal consequences of doing the wrong thing make it difficult for local housing teams to know how to help. 

‘I’ve never experienced support like this’

It’s why projects like this one are so important for understanding how local authorities can help people who are experiencing rough sleeping that are excluded from mainstream support. It brings together time-limited accommodation, independent immigration advice and case progression, wrap-around support, and a dedicated point of contact at the Home Office to get quick decisions. One of the people supported by the project didn’t believe his outreach worker and called it a ‘hoax’ when he was first offered a place to stay as he’d never experienced support like this before, due to his immigration status.

We know that there is very little funded immigration advice, with many Immigration Advisers and Law Centres having long waiting lists and limited capacity to take on new cases. This is amplified when people have experiences of homelessness and rough sleeping, which often can create more difficulties with gathering evidence needed for immigration applications. This in turn makes their cases more ‘complex’. 

We also know that the Home Office has large backlogs of immigration and asylum applications, with many people waiting more than a year for a decision. Taken together with the current rough sleeping figures showing a 20% increase in people sleeping rough across England, and half of people sleeping rough in London were not born in the UK, if we don’t learn how to support migrants rough sleeping, we will never be able to end rough sleeping in the UK.

Through the efforts from housing teams across four local authorities leading partnerships of support services in their areas, we’re on track to support 200 people. Crucially, we will generate evidence of what can be done within the current legislative framework to support people with unclear or restricted immigration status. 

It’s not always been smooth sailing. We’ve navigated data sharing obstacles. We had questions about what legal basis local authorities can use to house people who have ‘no recourse to public funds’. And we’ve had to ensure that people feel safe to take part in a project with the Home Office as a key partner. 

Reflections so far

As we come to the end of the service delivery, I’ve been reflecting on what we can take from the last 12 months:

• Partnership working has been key: housing leads in local authorities have been able to tap into existing services and form new relationships, creating a wrap-around support system for people who have accessed the project. Many of these services have been doing amazing work for many years, supporting people excluded from mainstream support but this hasn’t always been straightforward. Through partnership work we can together deliver better services for people . One worker said "we've really struggled to build trust with people who have immigration issues as we've had nothing to offer them until now. Test & Learn has given us something to offer and it's come at the perfect time”.
• Clear data sharing agreements: As with any partnership working across different organisations, having clear data sharing agreements and processes in place from the outset of the project has been vital to ensuring we can gather the data needed for the project evaluation, which is being led by the Behavioural Insights Team. Without this data, we wouldn’t be able to evidence what works to end rough sleeping for migrants.
• Trust: trust between partner organisations, trust between workers and the people they’re trying to support, trust in the Home Office, trust in the evaluators; throughout, trust has been so important in making this project work. This has been built through relationships on the ground and by bringing people together to be able to talk through their hopes and fears for the project. This trust will hopefully outlast the project itself which is due to end in March 2026. 

The final report is due to be published in late summer 2026.

• Kerri Bissoonauth is Programme Lead at the Centre for Homelessness Impact