Tom Preest
Head of Rough Sleeping Adviser Team, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities
About this speaker
Tom Preest has been trying and failing to end rough sleeping since 1996 but there are at least 11 years before he retires!!
Tom is the head of the Rough Sleeper Adviser Team in the Rough Sleepers Initiative (RSI), working with local authorities and their partners to deliver and improve the services and support available to people experiencing rough sleeping across England. He had previously joined the Rough Sleepers Unit in the early 2000s, working with Louise Casey and the team to establish new approaches nationally.
Tom started his career with Thames Reach as a mental health project worker before joining the outreach team, where he pioneered the approach to targeting cold weather shelter bed spaces for identified individuals.
Tom then moved to the London Borough of Camden and was the rough sleeping lead there for 18 years. LB Camden was at the forefront of the innovation and changes being introduced to work to tackle rough sleeping at the time, not least through multi-agency partnerships (Camden’s Tasking and Targeting model was the first of it’s kind in the country) and the introduction of an approach that balanced support for individuals with enforcement interventions where appropriate.
