Sleeping Rough: Death

(asked on 4th March 2020) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how many deaths have been recorded as a result of homeless people taking shelter in bins which are then removed by refuse workers in each of the last twelve months; what steps he is taking to help prevent further such deaths; and whether he plans to provide training to refuse workers to help reduce the risk of further deaths.


Answered by
Luke Hall Portrait
Luke Hall
Minister of State (Education)
This question was answered on 9th March 2020

Every premature death of someone homeless is one too many and we take this matter extremely seriously.?It should not happen that people die prematurely?and on the street?because they are homeless.

We are absolutely committed to ending rough sleeping by the end of this parliament. To achieve this, we are providing £437 million to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping in 2020/2021.This marks a £69 million increase in funding from the previous year.

This year we have expanded the Rough Sleeping Initiative with investment of £46 million for 246 areas – providing funding for an estimated 2,600 bed spaces and 750 staff. Next year, we are allocating a further £112 million to around 270 areas, funding up to 6,000 bed spaces and 2,500 staff. And this is having an impact.?The RSI?impact evaluation?shows that the Initiative has reduced the number of people sleeping rough by 32 per cent in the areas funded, compared to the number it would have been had the RSI not been in place.

We do not hold data on the?number of deaths as a result of people taking shelter in refuse bins.?However, we understand some local councils and businesses have conducted research and supplied advice on this issue in recent years.

This Government is aware that a skilled frontline workforce is essential to delivering good services and ultimately reducing homelessness.?Delivery of the?Key Groups?Training programme launched in Summer 2019. ?The training programme is expected to cater for 3,450 members of the frontline homelessness workforce by the end of June 2020.

Local authorities and outreach teams work tirelessly to ensure that appropriate support is given to all rough sleepers regardless of where they are found, be that in tents, doorways, bins or on the street.

Reticulating Splines