Homelessness

Debate between Rebecca Pow and Andrew Lewer

Tuesday 27th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran). I welcome today’s debate on the estimates of public spending by the Government on homelessness, which is a big challenge across the country. Happily, some great initiatives that aim to improve the current situation are coming up.

First, I acknowledge the £1 billion investment allocated to combating rough sleeping through to 2020. Over the past seven years, there has been an increase in rough sleeping from 2,000 to 4,000, and one root of the problem is mental health issues, which mean that some rough sleepers refuse offers of accommodation. Moreover, many of the rough sleepers in the UK—nearly 60% of the total—are recent arrivals.

To tackle rough sleeping in Northampton, the council has brought together a series of local services and organisations—charities, faith groups, health professionals and advice and support providers—and the police to develop a rough sleepers strategy, “Together we can change lives”, which encourages people to prevent and reduce rough sleeping in the borough. I take this opportunity to congratulate Northampton’s emergency night shelter for its great work. It opened a year ago and has provided more than 180 homeless people with a temporary shelter.

[Rebecca Pow]

This very week in Taunton Deane, police are meeting with the chamber of commerce, along with health and housing specialists, to discuss the serious issue of homelessness. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is not just one solution or just one problem? We need to work together in a cross-departmental way.

[Andrew Lewer]

That is absolutely critical and very much in the spirit of what I am outlining here.

The 94 volunteers in the night shelter have helped 104 of their guests move into settled accommodation; 12 people are currently there. Alongside that is the work of the Northampton Hope Centre, which I visited last year and was most impressed by. Some 36 volunteers as well as local faith groups, Northampton Partnership Homes, S2S, Midland Heart, the county council, SSAFA, the Army, the Hope centre and the council all participated in a borough-wide count of rough sleepers in Northampton on 10 November 2017. All the people found were over 25, and of the 11 people identified 10 were already known to the council’s street outreach team. Of those, five were refusing to engage with local services, four had been provided with accommodation but lost it, as the report indicated, through their own actions. That shows the seriousness of the challenge and some of the complexities of the cases.

The rough sleeping strategy is collaborative—a determined approach to achieve a step change in tackling the reasons why people sleep rough and help those on our streets to turn their lives around. As my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) said, the issue is about working across all partner agencies to provide the right mix of advice, support and practical help to change each person’s life.

I believe that tackling homelessness also means building more houses. I am pleased to point out that since 2010, the Government have increased new housing numbers by 50%.