Museum of Homelessness attended the Prime Minister’s Summit to End Rough Sleeping on Monday 26th October 2026. We are pleased to be able to contribute the experiences of our community and the findings of our independent investigations. We only hope we did everyone justice.
Having heard first hand from the Prime Minister and senior ministers regarding the new approach, we understand these are genuine commitments not just for Christmas but for the duration of this parliament.
We feel cautiously optimistic about the potential for positive change for people who are homeless but we know there is a lot to do.
The same day, we were invited onto the BBC The World Today to share our analysis of the political changes we are seeing in the UK around homelessness.
You can watch the feature here, MoH’s analysis starts at 2.45m in.
A clip of the BBC The World Today on 26th October 2026, featuring Jess Turtle from Museum of Homelessness.
what still needs to happen
We remain cautiously optimistic about the motivations and ambitions from central government, but
We need structural changes across government as well as more funding; stop people being discharged from prison to the streets, undo the hostile environment, unfreeze local housing allowance and make proper use of long term empty buildings to name just a few requirements for real change.
The grassroots needs to be involved and prioritised, the government needs to include a wider representation in the plans, including the arts and homelessness sector as well as survivor led specialist organisations such as The Outside Project.
To shape the most effective policy we need to pay most attention to people living the experience now rather than lived experience.
We need more accountability from local authorities and we need to build public services where everyone is loved and no one says 'this isn't my job'
An Immediate Impact
The increased funding is already having an impact. By Friday morning we were working with Haringey’s Rough Sleeping team to offer people rough sleeping in the park new offers of accommodation and support, tailored to the person.
Although we do not take government funding for homelessness work, we are pleased to see immediate tangible change for our community. We will continue to offer productive partnership working - and challenge where necessary - to local authorities and mainstream services ensuring that compassion, not enforcement is at the front of this new drive. Thank you to all our colleagues across the sector who also believe in this approach and to those who don’t; it’s time to change things up now.
Thank you to all of you who are supporting our independent role in this work, both nationally and locally. If you do not already support us, you can do so here.
Thank you, love from MoH crew