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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if he will list the last 10 occasions on which his Department has responded to a request for a comment from the media on homelessness; and what his Department's response was on each such occasion.

On Thursday 13 and Friday 14 December my Department received 10 requests for comment from the media on homeless, which were responded to as follows.

The Department provided the following statement to requests from 6 media outlets, and one further media outlet requesting an interview or statement in response to a report from Crisis on the numbers of rough sleepers in Britain:

Heather Wheeler MP, Minister for Housing and Homelessness said: “It is simply unacceptable that anyone has to sleep on the streets which is why we have set out bold plans backed by £1.2 billion to tackle all forms of homelessness, including our £100 million Rough Sleeping Strategy. This is already making a difference through additional bed spaces and support workers and new legislation means people at risk are getting the help they need more quickly. But we know more needs to be done to end rough sleeping for good and are committed to work with partners like Crisis to do just that.”

Further, the Department provided the following statement to requests from 3 media outlets in response to the publication of experimental homelessness statistics:

Heather Wheeler MP, Minister for Housing & Homelessness said: “Everyone deserves a safe and secure place to live. It is good to see our Homeless Reduction Act making a real difference but we know we need to do more. “That is why we are investing £1.2 billion to tackle all forms of homelessness, we are putting £9 billion into our affordable housing programme and we are also empowering councils to borrow to build more council homes to ensure that more people have a home of their own.”

This information was compiled on Friday 14 December.