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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps he is taking to prevent the deaths of homeless people during the winter of 2018-19; and what long-term prevention strategy is being developed by his Department in relation to homeless people.

We are clear that no one should ever have to sleep rough and are determined to make it a thing of the past.

This year, as part of the Rough Sleeping Initiative, we provided £30 million to 83 areas with the highest levels of rough sleeping. This funding will boost the immediate support available, including providing an additional 1,750 bed spaces for those sleeping rough or at risk this winter. This will be followed by an additional £45 million in 2019-20 to continue to respond to emerging challenges and make an immediate impact.

As part of our new Rough Sleeping Strategy, published on 13 August, we will provide up to £2 million in 2018/19 in health funding. This will be used to test models of community-based provision designed to enable access to health and support services for people who are sleeping rough. We have also asked NHS England to spend up to £30 million on health services for people who sleep rough, over the next five years. Alongside this, we will ensure that people sleeping rough have access to existing local systems by providing new funding for rough sleeping navigators.

Most importantly, we will work to ensure that Safeguarding Adult Reviews are conducted when a person who sleeps rough dies or is seriously harmed as a result of abuse or neglect, whether known or suspected, and there is concern that partner agencies could have worked more effectively to protect the adult. We will consider how lessons learned from these reviews will inform improvements in local systems and services so this does not happen again.

We are clear that only by taking a holistic approach to homelessness and rough sleeping will we ensure that support is there for those who need it most. That is why our rough sleeping strategy builds on the foundation of the Homelessness Reduction Act and has prevention at its centre - stopping people from becoming homeless in the first place and providing them with the right support to find work and live independently. We are also committed to publishing a strategy on wider homelessness issues, which the cross-government Rough Sleeping and Homelessness Reduction Taskforce, will move on to address in due course.

I strongly believe that this package will achieve substantial results, alongside the work already underway. We have allocated £1.2 billion to tackling homelessness through to 2020. This includes £617 million in Flexible Homelessness Support Grant funding which local authorities can use strategically to prevent and tackle homelessness in their area.