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

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what estimate he has made of the number of rough sleepers in the St Helens local authority area in each year since 2010.

Annual rough sleeping counts and estimates data for 326 local authorities from 2010 to 2016, including St Helens, can be found in table 1 of our published live table: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/593685/Rough_Sleeping_Autumn_2016_Final_Tables.xls

This Government is determined to do more to reduce the number of people sleeping rough. We have established a new Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Implementation Taskforce, chaired by the Secretary of State, which will drive forward the implementation of a cross-Government strategy to tackle this issue.

We have allocated over £1 billion up to 2020 to support these efforts including piloting a Housing First approach for some of the most entrenched rough sleepers in the 3 major areas of England – including the Liverpool City Region. We are also implementing the Homelessness Reduction Act, the biggest change to homelessness legislation in decades, which will require councils to provide early support to people at risk of homelessness and rough sleeping.