CVL honoured in national awards

We have won one of five coveted awards at Homeless Link’s national Excellence Awards 2025.

Homeless Link is the national membership charity for frontline homelessness organisations, and its annual awards recognise the innovative and impactful work happening across the sector to support people experiencing homelessness and rough sleeping in England.

We won the award for Unlocking Housing Supply, for our work sourcing void properties and turning them into stable homes, while building community integration and enhancing wellbeing and social mobility.

Over the past 12 months, we have purchased and refurbished 38 void properties, significantly boosting the local housing supply. This work has not only created homes for people in urgent need but also generated local employment.

We were selected from 115 entries to the Excellence Awards across the five categories, 29 of which were shortlisted. It will receive support from Homeless Link to raise the profile of its work among key stakeholders and will be able to use the accolade to assist in building partnerships and securing funding.

The judging panel, composed of five experts from across the homelessness sector, commended the organisation for its innovative housing solutions and collaboration with local authorities, charities, businesses, and community stakeholders as well as the provision of employment opportunities.

We are focused on building pride and ownership amongst a community who feel undervalued, helping people feel safe and secure. A home provides individuals with more freedom to take ownership of their lives and gives them confidence to rebuild themselves, make new friends and help other people who have been in a similar position by continuing to work with us.

Mike Milen, CEO of CVL said: “This is a well-deserved reward for all the hard work put in by the entire team at CVL, including staff, volunteers, trustees and, not forgetting the countless homeless and insecurely housed women and men who placed their trust in us and helped shape our approach. We’d also like to shout out to those without whom this would have been significantly more challenging, including Charles Lewis and the team at Resonance, Mark Barlow and his team at Logic Architecture, Graham, Gary and the team at SRC, Sally Edwards and the team at Thirteen Housing without whom we would have struggled and last but not least Andrew Ballinger and all at the Ballinger Charitable Trust for their support when others were not interested.”

Rick Henderson, Chief Executive of Homeless Link, added: “Homeless Link’s annual Excellence Awards highlight the innovative, impactful and dedicated work happening across the country to ensure that people have a place to call home and the support they need to keep it. Homelessness organisations are managing extremely high levels of demand from people with increasingly complex support needs, while continuing to face significant financial pressures, and it’s important to recognise these exceptional efforts.

“CVL is addressing the critical shortage of affordable and suitable housing in an innovative way. The holistic tailored support that they offer people is building lasting independence and resilience and significantly reducing the risk of repeat homelessness. We congratulate them on receiving this award.”