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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how many rough sleepers have died as a result of their homeless status between November 2017 and March 2018.

The death of any rough sleeper is a tragedy. That is why this Government has committed to halve rough sleeping by 2022 and eliminate it altogether by 2027. Establishing the causes of death for any person in the UK is a matter for medical professionals or coroners.

Local areas and homelessness services often hold detailed information about the people who sleep rough in their area, including about rough sleepers who have died where this information is available them.

We are overhauling the statutory homelessness data collection alongside the introduction of the Homelessness Reduction Act. This will give us better insights into the causes of homelessness and the support people need. The new statutory homelessness data collection will be called H-CLIC.

The first meeting of the Rough Sleeping and Homelessness Reduction Taskforce took place on the 7 March. The Taskforce will drive forward the implementation of a cross-Government strategy to reduce rough sleeping.

We have allocated over £1 billion through to 2020 to prevent and reduce all forms of homelessness including piloting a Housing First approach for some of the most entrenched rough sleepers.