Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, when he plans to roll out the temporary accommodation service for prison leavers to all probation regions in England and Wales.

As part of our commitment to eliminate rough sleeping, we are working across Government, with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC), the Welsh Government and other Government Departments, to address the barriers offenders face in securing suitable accommodation.

Our Prisons White Paper sets out our vision that no-one subject to probation supervision is released from prison homeless. By 2024-25 we will spend £200 million a year to reduce reoffending, including improving prison leavers’ access to accommodation. This includes expanding our new Community Accommodation Service (CAS), which currently provides up to twelve weeks temporary housing in five regions, to support the thousands of people in England and Wales who leave prison each year without accommodation. The provision will also support those transitioning down from Approved Premises or Bail Accommodation and Support Services.

The CAS service takes account of the needs of women, including those with complex needs, with accommodation provision dedicated to single gender usage as required. Community Probation Practitioners, working together with local partners, are responsible for ensuring that vulnerable female prison leavers receive appropriate support and are provided with housing beyond the 12 weeks emergency accommodation.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) announced their Accommodation for Ex-Offenders (AfEO) scheme on 28 July 2021. The scheme has been developed, together with CAS, to provide a pathway for prison leavers from prison into their own private rented sector accommodation. No public targets have been set for the AfEO scheme, but local authorities will be providing monitoring information to DLUHC alongside wider monitoring information on homelessness and rough sleeping. Overall, £13 million has been allocated to 87 schemes across 145 local authorities.

Accommodation circumstances for offenders are reported annually as official statistics. Data for the period 01 April 2021 to 31 March 2022 will be published in July 2022 in the Community Performance Annual report. In line with the Code of Practice for Statistics, access to these statistics before their public release is limited to those involved in the production of the statistics and the preparation of the release, and for quality assurance and operational purposes.