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Freshfields partners with Prince William’s Homewards programme
Global law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer (‘Freshfields’) today announces it has joined Prince William’s Homewards Partnership, a transformative locally led programme aiming to demonstrate that it is possible to end homelessness in the UK.
Founded by Prince William and The Royal Foundation in June 2023, Homewards is working with six flagship locations across the UK (Aberdeen, Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, Lambeth in London, Newport, Northern Ireland, Sheffield) to provide them with the space, tools and expertise to deliver and demonstrate innovative solutions that prevent and end homelessness, creating tried and tested models that can be scaled.
Homewards will also raise awareness of the breadth and complexities of homelessness through national campaigns, local storytelling and by placing those with lived experience at the heart of this work.
As the programme moves into its second year, Homewards will focus on turning collaboration into action. The Royal Foundation will work with organisations and individuals across the Homewards coalitions and Partnerships to deliver on each location’s locally specific action plan and priorities. Each location is also developing an innovative housing project which will test new ways to unlock homes at scale.
As one of the programme’s “Activators”, Freshfields will provide a broad range of expertise to help operationalise solutions across the Homewards locations. So far teams from Freshfields have supported Homewards on property matters and designing coalition structures for the locations.
Partner Victoria Hills commented: “We are delighted to partner with Homewards and work together with businesses and communities to help achieve our shared ambition to end homelessness for good. We are humbled to be involved in such a worthy programme and provide our legal services pro bono where we can add value and help drive forward its successes.”
Freshfields has previously advised The Royal Foundation of The Prince and Princess of Wales on the spin out of The Earthshot Prize, a global environmental prize and platform to discover, accelerate and scale ground-breaking solutions to repair and regenerate the planet, into its own stand-alone charitable entity.
Further information on Homewards can be found here.
