Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent progress his Department has made on expanding the availability of 12-week transitional accommodation for prison leavers.

The transitional Community Accommodation Service-Tier 3 (CAS3) was launched in 2021, initially in five probation regions, providing up to 12 weeks' accommodation on release, with support to move on to settled accommodation. Between 1 July 2021 and 17 June 2022, over 2,300 individuals, who would have otherwise been homeless, were accepted on to CAS3.

We expanded the service to cover Wales in June 2022, and are now in the process of extending it to the remaining six probation regions in England, to support the thousands of offenders who leave prison homeless.