Decision details

To allocate up to £425,986 to Gloucester City Council as Cheltenham Borough Council’s (CBC’s) contribution towards the total costs (of up to £2,340,142) of local housing authority-led rough sleeping services across the county for the period 2026/27.

Prior to the current financial year (2026-27), Gloucester City Council received grant funding from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) on behalf of all the districts across Gloucestershire to support the funding of rough sleeping services for the county. This grant funding was known as Rough Sleeper Initiative (RSI) funding. Alongside this RSI funding, the local housing authorities within Gloucestershire, along with Gloucestershire County Council, NHS Integrated Care Board and the Office for Police and Crime Commissioner, provided a relatively small amount of ‘top-up’ funding for some of the jointly commissioned services for rough sleepers. For CBC, this ‘top up’ came mostly from our MHCLG Homelessness Prevention Grant Funding allocation. (For 2025/26, a top-up of £49,332.70 was provided from our Homelessness Prevention Grant Funding, with an additional amount of £22,000 coming from within our General Fund homelessness budgets.)

From 2026-27, MHCLG will allocate homelessness and rough sleeping grant funding differently. Instead of Gloucester City Council receiving a single pot of RSI funding to meet most of the costs of rough sleeping services across the county, each local housing authority will now receive its own (unspecified) allocation for rough sleeping services as part of its Homelessness, Rough Sleeping and Domestic Abuse Grant Funding Allocation. This means that each local housing authority across Gloucestershire must now work together to agree how collectively we will pay for rough sleeping services within the county from the grant funding we will each receive from MHCLG.

For 2026-27, CBC will receive £1,045,874 from MHCLG (ringfenced for homelessness and rough sleeping services). The amount of grant funding each local housing authority receives is based on local needs (as assessed by MHCLG). Gloucester City Council, for instance, will receive a far greater grant funding allocation than CBC, whilst our neighbouring rural districts will receive significantly less.

Accordingly, each local housing authority have agreed to fund rough sleeping services on a cost sharing basis which is directly proportionate to the level of grant funding they will receive from MHCLG. (So, for example, if local housing authority A receives twice as much grant funding than local housing authority B, then the local authority A will contribute twice as much towards the rough sleeping costs than local authority B.)

Appendix 1 provides a table which breaks down CBC’s contribution of up to £425,986 against each of the rough sleeping services within the county, as well as including a summary of the key services this funding will support. It is worth noting that whilst this decision commits CBC to contribute up to £425,986, if any cost savings can be achieved during 2026/27, then CBC’s contribution will be reduced accordingly.

Not to allocate funding to support rough sleeping services. This is rejected on the basis that local housing authorities have received grant funding which is specifically ringfenced for homelessness and rough sleeping services. It is therefore appropriate that this funding is used for these purposes. Moreover, rough sleeping is the most visible form of homelessness, and if rough sleeping services were to cease, then it is likely that rough sleeping would increase significantly in Cheltenham. This in turn would have a considerably detrimental impact on the rough sleepers themselves, as well as on our communities, leading to reputational damage to CBC and interventions from MHCLG as our grant provider.

To provide a contribution towards the total costs of rough sleeping services using a different cost sharing approach. This has been explored, but it is considered that the cost sharing arrangement referred to in this report is the simplest and fairest approach overall. Moreover, it is the only cost sharing option that all districts were agreeable to.