Homelessness: Government Assistance

(asked on 19th February 2024) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what steps he is taking to ensure that local authorities have sufficient resources to provide adequate support services for people experiencing homelessness.


Answered by
Felicity Buchan Portrait
Felicity Buchan
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)
This question was answered on 26th February 2024

This Government is committed to tackling homelessness. We are investing over £1 billion in the Homelessness Prevention Grant over three years, including £109 million of the £150 million UK-wide funding this year and a further £120 million UK-wide funding announced at Autumn Statement for 2024/25 to help prevent homelessness.

The provision of support to households placed in temporary accommodation is essential to ensure that they are able to continue to enjoy a reasonable quality of life and access the range of services they need. In formulating their homelessness strategies, councils should consider what arrangements need to be in place to ensure that households placed in temporary accommodation, within their district or outside, are able to access relevant support services.

This funding we provide can be used flexibly by local authorities to help them carry out their statutory duties, for example to work with landlords to prevent evictions and offer financial support for people to find a new home and move out of temporary accommodation. Allocations of the funding to local authorities is based on a formula that reflects the local homelessness pressures in each area and takes account of the different demand and costs.

Further to this, the £1.2 billion Local Authority Housing Fund includes funding for local authorities to obtain better quality temporary accommodation which helps alleviate rough sleeping and homelessness.

Autumn Statement confirmed we will uprate LHA rates to cover the cheapest 30th percentile of local rents, making housing more affordable for private renters in Great Britain who get rent support through their benefits.

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