Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment he has made of the effect of Government policies on levels of homelessness over the last seven years.

My Department publishes regular statistics on rough sleeping, statutory homelessness and homelessness prevention and relief in England. These are published at a local authority level. The latest statistics can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/homelessness-statistics

England has a strong homelessness safety net, providing protection to the most vulnerable in our society.

Successful homelessness prevention and relief has risen by 30 per cent between 2009/10 and 2016/17.

But the Government remains clear that one person without a home is one too many. We are committed to do more to prevent more people becoming homeless in the first place.

That’s why we are implementing the most ambitious legislative reform in decades, the Homelessness Reduction Act, in April 2018, which will ensure that more people get the help they need earlier to prevent them from becoming homeless in the first place.

We are also remodelling statutory homelessness data collection alongside the introduction of the Homelessness Reduction Act to give us better insights into the causes of homelessness and the support people need.