Our Routes out of Homelessness charter has helped over 300 people secure temporary or permanent accommodation since we first created it in October 2020.
Find out how we’re helping our local communities struggling with homelessness with this vital charter.
Routes out of homelessness
Charity Shelter estimates at least 354,000 people in England were homeless last winter. As a socially conscious organisation, we’re committed to helping local communities wherever we can – and this includes supporting people struggling with homelessness.
That’s why we created the Routes out of Homelessness charter in October 2020 to help focus our efforts. The charter laid out our pledge to address homelessness wherever we can.
The charter was also signed by other organisations including the Department for Transport and British Transport Police as part of the rail industry’s commitment to tackle homelessness.
Thanks to the charter, between 2020 and 2024, we partnered with charities including The Big Issue Foundation, Crisis, End Youth Homelessness, Railway Children and Shelter to aid our work.
Making a difference at our stations
We first piloted an outreach programme with Shelter at Manchester Piccadilly and Birmingham New Street in December 2020. The programme included dedicated outreach teams at the stations offering help to those in need while ensuring a safe environment for them, railway staff and passengers.
After its success, we worked with Shelter again to launch similar outreach services at London Charring Cross and London Victoria stations in September 2022. And we’ve teamed up with charity St Mungo’s to run these services for the future.
Rough sleeping toolkit
We also teamed up with Shelter to make a digital toolkit in 2023 to empower our station staff in their interactions with people who may be sleeping rough.
The toolkit contains training and other vital information to help our staff confidently assist anyone they encounter who may be homeless. It includes details for a variety of charity and support services that may support those struggling.
Royal recognition
Kathleen O’Malley BEM is a social value manager at Network Rail and one of our staff who helped create the charter. Kathleen was awarded a British Empire Medal last December in recognition for her work on it.
Kathleen said: “It’s been wonderful to see the business understand the importance of creating social value in a meaningful way by supporting people sleeping rough in and around our stations.
“The Rough Sleeping on Rail Charter gave us the opportunity to explore how we can safeguard people we interact with on our infrastructure. Through this work, we can see what our local communities, passengers and frontline colleagues experience in this space, and how we can make a positive difference through dedicated outreach services. None of this would be possible without a lot of passionate people helping us to do the right thing.”
