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

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, if he will make it his policy to prioritise housing for homeless and displaced people in line with the Housing First programme.

Piloting Housing First was a Government manifesto commitment that was announced in the 2017 Autumn budget. Since its launch, our expert advisers have been working closely with each of the three pilot regions to monitor and support progress. We also commissioned a consortium, led by ICF, to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the programme, which will run for the duration of the pilots. The Housing First pilots are now in their fourth year and have supported over 1,050 of the most entrenched and cyclical rough sleepers across 23 local authorities.

We recognise that rough sleeping is a nationwide challenge, and that is why it is important that we consider the findings of our evaluation, together with our experiences from the three pilots, to ensure that we know how it could work best on a larger scale.

The Government committed to expanding Housing First in its latest manifesto and we will use the findings of our evaluation, together with our experiences from the three pilots, to inform next steps.