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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment his Department has made of trends in the level of deaths of homeless people in local authorities in England since 2013.

Every person who dies while they do not have a place to call home is one too many and we have a moral duty to act. It should not happen that people die prematurely and on the street because they are homeless.

In December 2018, the Office for National Statistics published valuable experimental statistics of the number of deaths of homeless people in England and Wales registered in 2013-2017. The statistics showed an estimated 597 deaths of homeless people in England and Wales in 2017, as well as a follow up release with a breakdown by local authority. Their work shines a light on this important issue.

Whilst we recognise that suitable housing is a key part of the solution, health services have a significant role to play, alongside other public services. My Department is working with the Department of Health and Social Care to ensure that rough sleepers have the health care they need, when they need it. In its Long-Term Plan, the National Health Service will invest up to £30 million extra on meeting the needs of rough sleepers, to ensure that the parts of England most affected by rough sleeping will have better access to specialist homelessness NHS mental health support, integrated with existing outreach services.

We are also ensuring that when a homeless person dies or is seriously injured as a result of abuse or neglect and there is concern that partner agencies could have worked more effectively to protect the adult, Safeguarding Adult Reviews take place so that local services can learn lessons from these tragic events to better prevent them from happening in the future.