Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate his Department has made of the number of time dispersal orders used by the police to clear homeless camps in the last year.

We introduced the dispersal power through the Anti-social, Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 to enable the police to disperse anti-social individuals for up to 48 hours. The legislation requires the officer authorising use of the power to be satisfied on reasonable grounds that it is necessary to remove or reduce the likelihood of people being harassed, alarmed or distressed or the occurrence of crime or disorder.

Data on how many times the dispersal power has been used is not collated centrally.