Prison Leaver Homelessness Hits Five-Year High as Burnham Pledges Rough-Sleeping Eradication
Nearly one in six people leaving prison in England and Wales in 2025-26 were released into homelessness, the highest rate in five years, according to analysis by the social justice charity Nacro The Guardian. Between April 2025 and March 2026, 15,155 people freed from prison had no accommodation, equivalent to 300 people every week and an 18% increase on the previous year.
The figures arrive the same day Prime Minister Andy Burnham pledged to eradicate rough sleeping in England, allocating an extra £340 million over three years in his first speech as prime minister. The confluence of a worsening crisis and a new funding commitment frames the central policy question: whether targeted housing investment can reverse a trend that has worsened every year since 2021-22.
Enver Solomon, chief executive of Nacro, said the proportion of prison leavers released without accommodation had risen from 10.6% in 2021-22 to 15.9% in 2025-26. The year-by-year trajectory is unambiguous: 11.6% in 2022-23, 13.2% in 2023-24, 14.9% in 2024-25, and 15.9% in the most recent period. Nacro's earlier reporting on the same dataset showed a 31% increase in homeless releases for 2023-24 and a 39.4% rise based on 2025 Ministry of Justice statistics Nacro, figures consistent with the upward arc now confirmed in the 2025-26 data.
The regional variation is stark. South-central England (Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire) recorded the highest rate of prison-leaver homelessness at 20.7%, followed by the East Midlands at 19.1% and the east of England at 18.4%. Wales had the lowest rate at 11.1%. The BBC reported that in one region, homeless releases rose from 940 between April 2023 and April 2024 to 1,585 in the same period the following year BBC.
More than 1,300 women were released homeless or to rough sleeping in 2025-26, a 27% increase on the previous year. Charlie Taylor, the chief inspector of prisons, reported that many prisons said up to 30% of prisoners had no settled address. Taylor identified two systemic drivers: prisoners frequently released directly from court without access to support services, and short sentences combined with recalls, often lasting only 14 days, which destabilise housing arrangements and contribute to the rise.
Prisons and the probation service in England and Wales operate under a statutory duty to refer offenders to a local authority if they are at risk of homelessness, defined to include living on the streets, squatting, or relying on night shelters. The gap between that duty and the outcomes documented by Nacro points to enforcement and capacity problems rather than an absence of legal obligation.
The reoffending correlate gives the housing crisis its criminal-justice weight. According to Solomon, three in four people released to rough sleeping reoffend within a year, compared with just over a third of those released into accommodation. A What Works evidence note separately found that two-thirds of people who experienced homelessness after prison release in England and Wales were reported as having reoffended within a year What Works Centre. The mortality data is equally grave. Nacro's report "Reducing deaths among prison leavers," published in July 2026, found that more than one person dies every day in the year after leaving prison Nacro. A third of those who die within two weeks of release were homeless.
The broader context here is a system where the legal infrastructure for referral exists, the reoffending and mortality linkages to homelessness are well-documented, and the year-on-year direction of travel has been consistently negative. The £340 million pledge over three years is the first top-line political response to that trajectory. Whether the funding reaches the operational pinch points Taylor identified, court releases without service access and the churn of short recalls, will determine whether the five-year upward trend bends or merely pauses.
