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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of funding allocated to Enfield Council's homelessness services provision.

In 2020/2021 we are providing £437 million to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping. This marks a £69 million increase in funding from the previous year. Funding given to local authorities seeks to address local homelessness and rough sleeping variation and is allocated according to demand in their areas.

Every local authority in England works directly with a specialist homelessness adviser from MHCLG, who engage with councils on an ongoing basis in order to help in ensuring that they are provided with the necessary resources and information to address homelessness in their locality.

Further to their work on homelessness, Enfield was identified as an area that would benefit from additional support around rough sleeping and was accordingly assigned a specialist rough sleeping adviser. This adviser works closely with the local authority in order to support and develop their work to tackle rough sleeping in their area and deliver their MHCLG funded interventions.

In terms of specific funding streams allocated to Enfield Council’s homelessness services provision, they have received:

• £7,163,422 in Flexible Homelessness Support Grant in 2019/20 and the same amount for 2020/21. This funding is allocated based on a formula that reflects relative homeless pressures.
• £398,287 in New Burdens fund in 2019/20, to assist with the implementation of the Homelessness Reduction Act. They have now been allocated £1,184,670 in Homelessness Reduction Grant funding for 2020/21, which provides an uplift on the new burdens funding allocated to implement the Homelessness Reduction Act. It will enable local authorities to do more to prevent and relieve homelessness in their areas. This is an increase of £786,383 in relation to their previous year’s New Burdens allocation, making them the borough with the 6th largest uplift nationally.
• £450,000 allocated in PRS Access Scheme funding in 2019/20, for a project designed to increase access and sustainment of tenancies in the private rented sector for those who are, or are at risk of becoming, homeless.
• £699,000 in the form of their Rough Sleeping Initiative grant for 2020/21, which is an increase of £458,629 in comparison to the £20,371 in Rapid Rehousing Pathway funding and £220,000 Rough Sleeping Initiative funding they received in 2019/20, which were combined for this year’s Rough Sleeping Initiative grant.