Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, when and how he plans to publish the work programme of the ministerial group on homelessness; and how voluntary and community organisations are represented on that group.

We are driving action right across government to tackle the root causes of homelessness in England through the Ministerial Working Group on homelessness. We do not currently have any plans to publish a work programme for the Working Group, but are working across departments to make sure tackling homelessness is an integral part of every department’s planning. This is an ongoing process.

The Minister also chairs a regular roundtable meeting with voluntary sector organisations to make sure their views and expertise are fed into homelessness policy and to ensure that the future response to homelessness:

• is focused more on prevention than crisis;
• develops a common understanding of ’what works’, and drives the spreading of good practice;
• encourages services to join up around the needs of vulnerable homeless people, including through using data; and
• maximises the opportunities presented by devolution in empowering local areas to restructure services from the bottom up and drive improvements in the service response.

The government publishes a list of all ministerial meetings with external bodies on departmental business on a quarterly basis. This is available at www.gov.uk.

Homelessness is a devolved issue in the rest of the UK.