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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of the level of funding provided to local authorities to perform their duties under the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 in light of the (a) health and (b) economic conditions resulting from the covid-19 outbreak.

In January 2020, prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Government announced £263?million in funding to local authorities to support them to deliver services to tackle homelessness in 2020/21. At the time, this was is an increase in overall funding for homelessness of £23 million on the previous financial year.

In total, following the onset of the pandemic, the Government is now spending over £700 million pounds to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping this year alone.

We have given councils an unprecedented £7.2 billion package of support. This includes £4.6 billion in un-ringfenced funding, £1.1 billion from the Infection Control Fund, £300 million to support Test and Trace, as well as funding allocated to councils from the new Local Alert Level system and a number of grants to support communities and vulnerable people.