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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what estimate she has made of the number of homeless people who have died while living on the street in each of the last five years in (a) Mid Cheshire constituency, (b) Cheshire and (c) England; and what steps her Department is taking to end rough sleeping in those areas.

Every death of someone sleeping rough on our streets is one too many. The estimated number of deaths of homeless people in England and Wales is published by the Office for National Statistics. You can find the data for between 2013 and 2021 here. ONS are doing further work revising their methodology for the data set to make it more robust so it is likely that their next publication will be in 2025.

We are developing a new cross-government strategy to get us on back on track to ending homelessness and rough sleeping. The £547 million Rough Sleeping Initiative (RSI) is continuing its support to up to 300 local authorities across England by funding local, tailored rough sleeping services. Cheshire East received £222,000 and Cheshire West and Chester received £661,000 of RSI funding for 2024-25.

As announced at Budget, we are also providing an additional £233 million in 2025-26 to prevent homelessness, taking total spending to £1 billion in 2025-26.