More than a dozen charities, including Shelter and Crisis, have written to the Chancellor, John Healey, urging him to use Wednesday's Budget to end the freeze on housing benefit for private renters, The Mirror reported on Friday.
The letter, which the paper said it had seen, calls on the Treasury to lift Local Housing Allowance (LHA) so that it once again covers the cheapest 30% of rents in each area. Trussell, Generation Rent, Homeless Link and St Mungo's are among the signatories named in the report.
The demand comes days before the first Budget of Andy Burnham's government. As Mayor of Greater Manchester, Burnham campaigned jointly with Crisis for an LHA increase, and he attacked the freeze during his Labour leadership campaign before entering No 10 in July.
LHA sets the maximum housing support available to private renters claiming Universal Credit or Housing Benefit. Rates were reset in April 2024 to the 30th percentile of local rents in the year to September 2023, frozen again from April 2025, and kept frozen for 2026/27 in a written statement by the Work and Pensions Secretary, Pat McFadden, on the day of the November 2025 Budget. The Resolution Foundation estimates that 1.9 million private-renting households in Great Britain are subject to the cap.
According to The Mirror, the charities wrote: "This Budget therefore presents a major opportunity to strengthen the UK Government's wider efforts to prevent and end homelessness. We urge you to unfreeze Local Housing Allowance and uprate rates so that they once again cover at least the cheapest 30% of homes in a local area."
The letter added: "Unfreezing LHA would also give millions of low-income private renters some much needed breathing space."
The signatories cite official figures showing about 135,000 households, including 177,000 children, living in temporary accommodation in England. Councils in England spent £2.93bn on temporary accommodation between April 2025 and March 2026, according to Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government figures reported by Inside Housing, which described the total as a record.
The letter draws on Resolution Foundation analysis from September putting the average gap between the frozen two-bedroom LHA rate and the 30th-percentile rent in England at £158 a month. The think tank updated that estimate on 21 October, saying the shortfall "has now reached an all-time high of 23.3 per cent – equivalent to a £170 a month 'affordability gap' for a typical family in a two-bedroom home". It projected last year that the gap would reach £180 a month by 2029‑30 without action.
Burnham addressed the issue directly during the leadership contest. In a speech at the People's History Museum in Manchester, quoted by the National Residential Landlords Association, he said: "We are forced to chase rents in the private-rented sector through the benefits system. When governments try to control these costs by freezing Local Housing Allowance, it makes families homeless and places unfunded pressures on councils when they have to pay for temporary accommodation. Britain's housing crisis is having a ruinous impact on its public finances."
A government spokesperson told The Mirror: "We're determined to turn the tide on poverty, and our recent statistics show that effort is making a difference - household incomes have risen 5% in real terms, food bank usage has fallen, and food insecurity is down."
The spokesperson added: "We have also launched a £1 billion Crisis and Resilience Fund, invested more than £1 billion in homelessness services, and committed a record £39 billion to affordable and social housing."
The Big Issue has reported concerns that uprating would push rents and the benefit bill upwards together. The NRLA, which also backs ending the freeze, disputes that it would drive significant rent rises.
The charities' call follows a letter from more than 40 organisations to the previous government in September 2025 and a separate appeal by Trussell this week. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, has pledged to reduce LHA further, according to PoliticsHome.
No 10 is expected to host a homelessness summit on Monday bringing together MPs and charities, PoliticsHome reported, with some of the letter's signatories due to attend. Healey delivers the Budget on 28 October.
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