Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what plans are in place to support local authorities to work closely with Community Rehabilitation Companies and the National Probation Service in identifying homeless ex-offenders.

Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) and the National Probation Service (NPS) are required to facilitate access to housing for the offenders that they are managing. This includes working together with local partners to help offenders find and maintain accommodation as part of a package of support tailored to meet their individual needs.

We know that Through The Gate provision is not currently meeting the standard we require. That is why we are investing an additional £22m per annum over the remaining life of the CRC contracts to ensure that CRCs deliver an enhanced Through The Gate service to offenders leaving prison. This investment will support approximately 500 additional CRC staff to deliver Through The Gate in prisons. Alongside this investment there will be a new specification, to be introduced shortly, which will ensure that CRCs complete specific tasks, including to help every prisoner to secure and maintain settled accommodation.

We are also investing £6m as part of the Government’s Rough Sleeping Strategy in pilot schemes bringing together prisons, local authorities, probation providers and others to plan, secure and sustain accommodation for offenders on release.

We regularly publish the performance of CRCs, including measures showing the percentage of offenders who have settled accommodation on release from custody. The latest information can be found in the ‘Community Performance Quarterly Management Information Release: update to June 2018’ on Gov.uk at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/community-performance-quarterly-mi-update-to-june-2018