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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the number of people sleeping rough in London from 21 December 2018 to 7 January 2019.

This Government is committed to halting rough sleeping by 2022 and eliminating it altogether by 2027. No one should ever have to sleep rough. That is why last summer we published the cross-government Rough Sleeping Strategy which sets out an ambitious £100 million package to help people who sleep rough now, but also puts in place the structures that will end rough sleeping once and for all. The Government has now committed over £1.2 billion to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping over the spending review period.

National street counts and intelligence driven estimates of people sleeping rough are conducted every autumn. The next publication will be released on 31 January 2019 at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/homelessness-statistics#rough-sleeping

The Greater London Authority (GLA) also commission the CHAIN database which holds information on the number of people rough sleeping in London. This is published quarterly, and the next data release will be available on 31 January 2019 at: https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/chain-reports