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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment his Department has made of the effect of proposals for the future funding of supported housing on levels of rough sleeping; and if he will make a statement.

The same amount of funding that would have been available through Housing Benefit or housing element of Universal Credit to fund supported housing in 2020/21 will be made available as grant instead.

The recently established Rough Sleeping and Homelessness Reduction Taskforce will design and drive forward the implementation of our cross-government strategy to achieve our commitment of halving rough sleeping by 2022 and eliminating it altogether by 2027. We have also brought together a panel of external experts through the Rough Sleeping Advisory Panel, who will be working closely with the Taskforce in developing the strategy to achieve our manifesto commitments.

The Government has already taken important steps to prevent and reduce homelessness and rough sleeping. This includes, allocating over £1 billion in funding through to 2020 and taking forward the most ambitious legislative reform in this area in decades, the Homelessness Reduction Act, which will mean people will get the help they need sooner.