The British government said on 2026-06-28 that it would formally repeal the Vagrancy Act, ending the use of a nearly 202-year-old law that had criminalized rough sleeping in England and Wales.
The Independent reported that the repeal was due to take effect the following Monday through secondary legislation, after ministers used powers contained in Labour's Crime and Policing Act passed in April. The Vagrancy Act, first introduced in 1824, had long been criticized by homelessness advocates for treating people on the street as offenders rather than as people in need of housing and support.
Housing Secretary Steve Reed framed the change as a shift "from punishment to prevention," according to the report. That wording captures the political argument behind the repeal. Rather than relying on an old public-order statute aimed at "idle and disorderly persons" and "rogues and vagabonds," the government says it wants to replace the old approach with more targeted modern offences, including facilitating begging for gain and trespassing with intent to commit a crime. Officials said those provisions would close any legal gap left by abolition of the older law.
Campaigners treated the repeal as a major symbolic and practical victory. The Independent quoted leaders from St Mungo's, Crisis and Housing Justice, all of whom described the move as a more humane turning point. Their shared argument was that criminalization drives vulnerable people away from services, pushes them deeper into insecurity and mistakes a housing emergency for a law-enforcement problem.
The change has been a long time coming. Plans to abolish the Act were first announced by the previous Conservative government in 2022, but ministers then insisted that replacement powers should be in place first. Labour is now executing the formal repeal while emphasizing that police and local authorities will still retain tools to respond to exploitative or genuinely criminal behavior associated with street begging and trespass.
The supplied evidence does not provide full detail on implementation guidance or on whether all local authorities and police forces support the new framework equally. It also does not establish what additional housing resources will accompany the legal change. Those are important unanswered questions, because ending criminal penalties alone does not resolve the shortage of affordable housing, treatment services or supported accommodation that often shapes rough sleeping.
Even so, the legal significance is clear. On 2026-06-28, the government confirmed that one of Britain's oldest homelessness-related criminal laws was being removed from active use. The repeal does not end homelessness, but it changes the state's formal posture toward people sleeping rough. After two centuries in which the law often treated street homelessness as deviance, ministers are now publicly aligning the legal framework with the view that rough sleeping is primarily a social emergency requiring intervention, support and prevention rather than prosecution. The practical impact will now depend on whether repeal is matched by support systems strong enough to keep vulnerable people from cycling back into crisis. Ministers have framed replacement offences as narrower tools aimed at exploitation and criminal conduct rather than homelessness itself, a distinction advocates have pushed for years.
