Refugees: Ukraine
(asked on 7th November 2023) - View Source
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, how many Ukrainian refugees became homeless after their sponsorships through the Homes for Ukraine scheme ended.
Answered by
Felicity Buchan
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)
Since the start of the Homes for Ukraine scheme, we have provided over £1.1 billion in tariff funding to councils and the devolved administrations to enable them to support Ukrainian guests to settle in, integrate, and then move on from sponsorship at the right time. As we have set out previously, we always anticipated that a proportion of arrivals would end up relying on homeless prevention services and our funding was designed to address this in part. Councils in England have also received a £109 million top up to the Homelessness Prevention Grant this year to reduce the risk of homelessness amongst Ukrainians. They will be able to use this funding to support other people at risk of homelessness. We have created the £750 million Local Authority Housing Fund for councils in England to buy or create housing stock to accommodate Ukrainian and Afghan families at risk of homelessness, and to ease wider homelessness pressures, seeking to ensure that those communities which have been most generous in welcoming new arrivals are not penalised with longer social housing waiting lists.
The vast majority of Ukrainians have been able to sustain housing without the need for homelessness support. The latest data indicates of those who have had a duty accepted, the majority have had their homelessness successfully prevented or relieved. Figures show only a fraction of all Ukrainian arrivals are in temporary accommodation. This demonstrates that councils have generally been very successful at preventing the need to place households in temporary accommodation.
We remain steadfast in our support for Ukraine, the Ukrainians now living in the UK and the local authorities supporting them. We continue to keep the scheme under constant review and will set out any updates in the usual way.