Last week, The Labour party took over 10 Downing Street. Now Angela Rayner is Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.

In her new role, Angela will be leading the Government in working to end homelessness. Because of this, we wrote to her office to discuss how we can work together.

Our Letter to Angela Rayner

Dear Angela,

Congratulations on your new role as Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. We were excited to read about the Labour Party’s manifesto content aimed at ending homelessness during the election campaign. We would like to play our part in in helping you to formulate and deliver policies that will end rough sleeping and homelessness in the UK.

The Connection at St Martins is based in the most concentrated area of rough sleeping in the UK. Over the past 100 years we have been supporting people experiencing homelessness, working with them not for them to find ways to move away from the streets for good. The majority of our work is based in our centre by Trafalgar Square – a short walk from your offices We work with people who are either living on the streets or returning to them repeatedly as the current responses are not meeting their needs.

In 2023/4, we supported just over 1,800 people, supporting 185 into accommodation. We also provide practical help such as food and showers as a starting point. From there, we help people to access treatment services such as methadone prescriptions and NHS nurses. We also provide clinical psychology help for people who may have never had contact with a mental health professional before. This is done in partnership with the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust.

We would like to invite you to our centre to meet our clients and staff members to find out more from them about what makes a difference in helping people to find a place to call home. We place a high importance on developing relationships of trust between staff and clients and we are a trauma informed organisation.

We look forward to welcoming you to our centre and working with you over the course of the next parliament to end the shameful blight on our city and our country that is our homelessness crisis.

Pam Orchard
Chief Executive Officer

Thank you for reading our letter to Angela Rayner and her team. To find out more about our advocacy work, click here.