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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department is taking to improve outreach services for homeless people.

The Government announced on 30 March a new Rough Sleeping Initiative team that has direct oversight over the delivery of £30 million in 2018/19 to 83 local authorities, with further funding of £45 million to be allocated in 2019/20.

This tailored approach is ensuring interventions are planned on the basis of local need, existing provision and service gaps in each area and that funding is directed to the places where it will have most impact.

The types of interventions we are funding include local co-ordination and case management work, increased outreach provision, a range of emergency accommodation options, access routes into more settled accommodation and support to help people engage and sustain accommodation. These interventions have worked in the past, and will work again.

To support this, the Government has also funded the London Training Academy to deliver assertive outreach training this Autumn to staff working with rough sleepers across England. The training will seek contributions from practised outreach workers and people with lived experience, sourcing materials including case studies and short films, creating a course that reflects good practice from across England, covering rural and urban areas.

The Government is committed to halving rough sleeping by 2020 and ending it by 2027 and this training will allow outreach workers to work this autumn to reach vulnerable people and make an impact on rough sleeping numbers immediately.