A new homeless day centre opens three days a week from October at the CVA Resource Centre on London Road, run by CVA, CAYSH and Spires with government funding.

A new day centre for people who are homeless or at risk of losing their home opens in October at the CVA Resource Centre on London Road, running three days a week. Outreach workers will spend a further two days a week in the community, and one-to-one sessions and community events will be hosted at West Croydon Baptist Church (Croydon Voluntary Action).

Three established local organisations are running it in partnership: Croydon Voluntary Action (CVA), youth homelessness charity CAYSH and homelessness charity Spires. The service is funded by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government under its Ending Homelessness in Communities Fund.

The partners say they saw an urgent need for an open-access space because Croydon’s existing day services are “at capacity and heavily oversubscribed”. The new centre is aimed at anyone rough sleeping or facing homelessness, including younger residents and people in insecure housing who may not approach traditional homelessness services.

What the centre will offer

Alongside somewhere safe to rest, laundry and showers, visitors will be able to get (CVA):

  • a rapid assessment of their needs on arrival
  • housing advice and help searching for a home
  • coaching to keep hold of an existing tenancy
  • debt advice and money management support
  • employability advice and one-to-one coaching
  • mediation with families where a relationship breakdown risks homelessness
  • help accessing benefits, services and healthcare
  • volunteer befriending to build local connections

The approach is built on what the partners call asset-based community development: connecting people to local groups, activities and support networks rather than only to services.

“We are thrilled to be working with CVA and Spires, bringing help to homeless people in Croydon,” said Chris Deacon, chief executive of CAYSH. “We are excited to trial innovative approaches in reaching young people in the community who are at risk of homelessness.”

Rev Denzil Larbi, pastor of West Croydon Baptist Church, said hosting the service “is very much part of our heart as a church”. Sarah Burns, chief executive of CVA, said the organisation was “delighted to be supporting our frontline partners in taking coordinated action to end homelessness and rough-sleeping in Croydon”.

The money behind it

The Ending Homelessness in Communities Fund is an £8.4 million national pot attached to the government’s £442 million, three-year Rough Sleeping Programme, which has set the target of offering everyone a route off the streets by Christmas 2026 (MHCLG programme guidance). Neither the partnership nor MHCLG has published the amount awarded to the Croydon service.

Separately, the programme’s published allocations give Croydon £1,462,903 for 2026/27 and just over £4 million across three years (MHCLG funding allocations). Two caveats sit in the allocation table’s own footnotes: the 2027/28 and 2028/29 figures are provisional, and the capital element for settled accommodation is conditional on a delivery plan being agreed.

Rough sleeping in Croydon now

The official autumn snapshot counted 24 people sleeping rough in Croydon on a single night in 2025, down from 38 in 2024. The borough’s worst year in the series was 2016, when the count was 68 (MHCLG rough sleeping snapshot). Croydon’s rate of 5.9 per 100,000 people is below the England figure of 8.2. The snapshot is a one-night count, so it understates how many people experience homelessness across a year, and it does not count people in hostels, sofa surfing or in temporary accommodation.

What it means for you

  • If you are facing homelessness now, do not wait for October. Croydon Council’s rough sleeping pages list the current drop-in services, and Nightwatch volunteers are in Queen’s Gardens, by Fell Road, at 9.30pm every night of the year.
  • From October, the new centre at the CVA Resource Centre, 82 London Road, will be open three days a week. The partnership has not yet published which days, or an exact opening date; we will report them when it does.
  • If you want to help, the partners are contactable through CVA, CAYSH and Spires, and the befriending strand of the service will need volunteers.

Sources