Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of resources available to local authorities to fulfil the additional duties placed on them under the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017.
The Homelessness Reduction Act requires local authorities to carry out additional duties to prevent and relieve homelessness and to intervene earlier to prevent homelessness.
The Government committed to fund the Act in line with the longstanding ‘new burdens’ doctrine. We announced funding of £61 million in January 2017 and, following further discussions with local authorities on the new duties, have provided an additional £11.7 million. This takes the total amount of new burdens funding to £72.7 million.
A new burdens assessment has been completed and can be found at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/homelessness-reduction-act-new-burdens-funding