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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps he is taking to ensure that assistance and accommodation is in place for homeless people in Cornwall.

The Government remains committed to combating homelessness and rough sleeping. No one should ever have to sleep rough. That is why we are aiming to halve rough sleeping by 2022 and eliminate it altogether by 2027.

We have implemented the most ambitious reforms in homelessness legislation in decades, the Homelessness Reduction Act which commenced in April 2018. The Act significantly reforms England’s homelessness legislation, ensuring that more people get the help they need earlier to prevent them from becoming homeless in the first place. To achieve this, we have set up a Rough Sleeping and Homelessness Reduction Taskforce that will focus on prevention and affordable housing.

We are supporting 48 projects through our £20 million Rough Sleeping Grant, with £470,000 awarded to the Nos Da project in Cornwall for services to work in partnership and prevent people from sleeping rough through identifying those at risk as well as assisting people into emergency accommodation.