Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what proportion of people leaving prison had settled accommodation arranged on release in each of the last three years.

Local Authorities are statutorily responsible for working with and supporting an individual in order to assist them into securing settled accommodation. However, as part of our probation reforms, we have extended services to provide improved support, pre and post-release, for offenders. This includes working with local partners to help them find accommodation.

Up until 2014/15 prisons were responsible for collecting information on accommodation outcomes for prisoners on release. The figures were based on prisoners self-reporting and are therefore not directly comparable to the more recent performance information collected by Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs), who became responsible from 1 May 2015 for helping offenders obtain suitable accommodation as part of their Through the Gate resettlement services.

The table below sets out the national performance of CRCs in helping offenders secure accommodation on release from Quarter 4 of 2015/16 to Quarter 4 of 2016/17. This is taken from the Community Performance Quarterly Management Information Release published on 27 July 2017 on gov.uk.

Table: Percentage of allocated persons with settled accommodation on release, Q4 2015/16 to Q4 2016/17, England & Wales (excluding London CRC)

Note: figures exclude London CRC due to insufficient data coverage.