Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment he has made of the accuracy of the finding, reported in the Guardian on 17 June 2019, that the number of homeless camps forcibly removed by local authorities across the UK has risen from 72 in 2014 to 254 in 2018; and if he will make a statement.

The Ministry of Housing, Commnunities and Local Government does not collect any statistics on the number of homeless camps who have been forcibly removed by local authorities.

The Guardian article on 17 June 2019 says the estimate is based on a Freedom of Information request to all councils in the UK about how many homeless encampments they had cleared since 2014, how many complaints about encampments they had received and details on charges for confiscated tents and possessions. The article says ‘an encampment was defined as a location where one or more homeless people were living in the area in private or public land’. 336 local authorities out of total of 408 in the UK provided a response. No further details about the overall quality and robustness of these statistics is provided so we are unable to make an assessment of the accuracy of these findings.

The Guardian article is available at the following link: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/jun/17/removal-of-homeless-camps-trebles-as-charities-warn-of-out-of-control-crisis

These statistics do not adhere to same rigour as government statistics. The Rough Sleeping Statistics, published on 31 January 2019, which are produced in compliance with the UK Statistics Authority’s Code of Practice for Statistics, include people sleeping rough in makeshift camps but no separate figures about the types of sites where people are sleeping rough are recorded or whether they have been forcibly removed by local authorities.

These statistics show the total number of people counted or estimated to be sleeping rough in each local authority area in England, on a single night in Autumn 2018 was 4,677. This was down by 74 people or 2 per cent from the 2017 total of 4,751 and was up 2,909 people or 165 per cent from the 2010 total of 1,768. Local authorities use a specific definition to identify people sleeping rough. This includes people sleeping or who are about to bed down in open air locations and other places including tents, cars, and makeshift shelters. The full definition of people sleeping rough is as follows:

People sleeping, about to bed down (sitting on/in or standing next to their bedding) or actually bedded down in the open air (such as on the streets, in tents, doorways, parks, bus shelters or encampments). People in buildings or other places not designed for habitation (such as stairwells, barns, sheds, car parks, cars, derelict boats, stations, or “bashes” which are makeshift shelters, often comprised of cardboard boxes). The definition does not include people in hostels or shelters, people in campsites or other sites used for recreational purposes or organised protest, squatters or travellers. Bedded down is taken to mean either lying down or sleeping. About to bed down includes those who are sitting in/on or near a sleeping bag or other bedding.

These statistics are available at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/rough-sleeping-in-england-autumn-2018.

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. The Government has now committed over £1.2 billion to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping over the spending review period. This year, Rough Sleeping Initiative investment totals £46 million and has been allocated to 246 areas – providing funding for an estimated 750 additional staff and over 2,600 bed spaces.