Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what recent steps his Department has taken to support homeless migrants living in the UK.
The 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. 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. The Government has now committed over £1.2 billion to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping over the spending review period.
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.
As part of our investment, in the Rough Sleeping Strategy we committed to £5 million of funding to help local areas take action to help non-UK nationals who sleep rough off the streets. This funding will complement the projects which we have already funded through the £100 million Controlling Migration Fund (CMF) for local authorities to work with non-UK nationals who sleep rough. Further CMF funding allocations will be announced shortly.”