Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what recent steps has he taken to reduce homelessness and rough sleeping in the West Midlands.

The latest statistics on homelessness and rough sleeping in England are published and can be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/homelessness-statistics#rough-sleeping

At Budget the Chancellor announced 28 million pounds of funding to pilot the Housing First approach for the country’s most entrenched rough sleepers. The pilots will cover the West Midlands Combined Authority, Greater Manchester, and the Liverpool City Region.

The exact allocation to the areas will be subject to on-going work with the regions and refinement of the scope of the pilots. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government are in regular contact with officials in the West Midlands and will continue to work closely with them going forward.

The recently established Rough Sleeping Advisory Panel, of which Andy Street, the Mayor of the West Midlands is a member, will support the Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Reduction Taskforce to develop a cross-government strategy to halve rough sleeping by 2022 and to eliminate it altogether by 2027.