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

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, with reference to paragraph 1 of Evaluating the Extent of Rough Sleeping: A new approach, published by his Department in December 2010, what assessment he has made of the effect of removing the requirement for a street count of rough sleepers to be conducted in areas where local authorities assess that there are more than 10 rough sleepers on local authority and other agency (a) evaluation of and (b) reduction in rough sleeping since 2010.

It is vital that we are open about the scale of rough sleeping. We overhauled the methodology for counting rough sleepers in 2010, so that now every council has to report the scale of the problem in their area.

In addition, the UK Statistics Authority report confirmed the designation of the statutory homelessness figures as National Statistics which fully comply with the Code of Practice.

Of course, nobody should ever have to sleep rough, or become homeless in the first place. That is why we launched a £40 million Homelessness Prevention Programme, including a £10 million rough sleeping fund to help new rough sleepers, or people at imminent risk of sleeping rough, and £10 million of funding for Social Impact Bonds to provide targeted support for entrenched single homeless people.