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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps the Government is taking to reduce homelessness in lower layer super output areas.

The Government is committed to reducing homelessness and rough sleeping.

Homelessness is a priority for our Ministerial team. The Government has now committed over £1.2 billion to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping over the spending review period. This includes supporting local authorities in the implementation of the Homelessness Reduction Act, increasing access to the private rented sector for families in temporary accommodation and supporting London boroughs to procure more efficiently.

No one should ever have to sleep rough. That is why last summer we published the cross-government Rough Sleeping Strategy. This 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. In its first year, our Rough Sleeping Initiative (RSI) provided over 1,750 new bed spaces and 500 staff.  This year we have expanded the RSI with investment of £46 million for 246 areas – providing funding for an estimated 2,600 bed spaces and 750 staff.

Local authorities are ultimately responsible for the allocation of funding resources within their respective geographical areas. This means that they will oversee the work done to reduce homelessness in any lower super output areas that fall within their remit.

As with all local government work to tackle homelessness, local authorities will be both supported and, where necessary, challenged by the MHCLG’s Homelessness Advice and Support Team (HAST). This team of advisers, drawn from local authorities and charities with expertise in the homelessness sector, help local authorities with work around statutory homelessness and single homelessness. These advisers have visited or had one-to-one contact with all 326 local authorities, focusing on the implementation of the Homelessness Reduction Act and also working very closely with them to bring down the number of people in bed and breakfasts over 6 weeks.

In addition to the above, MHCLG have overhauled the statutory homelessness data collection alongside the introduction of the Homelessness Reduction Act. This will give us better insights into the causes of homelessness and the support people need, with data broken down to local authority level. The new statutory homelessness data collection is called Homelessness Case Level Information Classification (H-CLIC). H-CLIC data is reported quarterly and the first case level H-CLIC returns were submitted to MHCLG over summer 2018.