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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what information his Department holds on how much each local authority has (a) budgeted for and (b) spent on temporary accommodation in the last three years; and if he will make a statement.

MHCLG publishes information on yearly local authority expenditure: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/local-authority-revenue-expenditure-and-financing.

MHCLG also publishes regular statistics on rough sleeping, statutory homelessness, temporary accommodation and homelessness prevention and relief. These are published at national, London and local authority level. The latest statistics can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/homelessness-statistics.

Flexible Homelessness Support Grant gives local authorities more control and flexibility in managing homelessness pressures. Unlike the DWP Temporary Accommodation Management Fee, which was a reactive payment that could only be used for particular types of Temporary Accommodation, this grant is upfront funding which can be used flexibly as part of councils’ resourcing for their homelessness strategies.

The grant forms part of the Government’s end to end approach to preventing and tackling homelessness. We are ring-fencing the grant of £615 million for three years to secure its investment in homelessness services and enable local authorities to focus on homelessness prevention.

It sits alongside other funding for homelessness, including the £316 million Homelessness Prevention funding and our £50 million homelessness prevention package.