Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what estimate his Department has made of the total spending under the Rough Sleeping Initiative in each month in the financial year 2018-19 in (a) London Boroughs and (b) England.
This Government is committed to reducing homelessness and rough sleeping. No one should ever have to sleep rough. That is why last summer we published the cross-government Rough Sleeping Strategy which sets out an ambitious £100 million package to help people who sleep rough now, but also puts in place the structures that will end rough sleeping once and for all. Already, this has provided over 1,750 new bed spaces and 500 staff– this means there are more people in warm beds tonight as direct result of government funding. In all, the Government has now committed over £1.2 billion to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping over the spending review period.
The Rough Sleeping Initiative programme is led by a multi-disciplinary team that includes MHCLG civil servants, expert rough sleeping advisers, seconded from the homelessness sector, and specialist advisers from across government who provide including health, prisons and probation and care leavers. The expert rough sleeping advisers are funded by MHCLG and the specialist advisers are funded by their own departments.
Rough Sleeping Initiative payments are not issued monthly. The table below highlights the amount of funding allocated to local authorities in 2018/19:
Rough Sleeping Initiative (RSI) Programme | 2018/19 |
RSI Main Grant - 6th July | |
London Boroughs | £7,792,148 |
Greater London Authority | £3,300,000 |
Local Authorities - England | £18,879,396 |
Sub Total | £29,971,544 |
Expert rough sleeping advisers | £424,575 |
Cold Weather Payments - Feb | £23,243 |
Overall Total | £30,419,362 |
A list of provisional local authority funding allocations can be found at
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/funding-allocated-for-councils-to-help-rough-sleepers.