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

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what estimate he has made of the number of homeless people in (a) Coventry, (b) the West Midlands and (c) the UK.

DCLG publishes regular statistics on rough sleeping, statutory homelessness and homelessness prevention and relief. These are published at a local authority level. The latest statistics can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/homelessness-statistics.

The Government remains committed to combating homelessness and rough sleeping. No one should ever have to sleep rough. That is why we are aiming to halve rough sleeping by 2022 and eliminate it altogether by 2027. To achieve this, we will set up a new Homelessness Reduction Taskforce that will focus on prevention and affordable housing, and we will pilot a Housing First approach to tackle rough sleeping.

We also supported the Homelessness Reduction Act which received Royal Assent on 27 April 2017. The Act significantly reforms England’s homelessness legislation, ensuring that more people get the help they need earlier to prevent them from becoming homeless in the first place.