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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what plans he has to ensure that personal protective equipment is provided to people working in homelessness services during the covid-19 outbreak.

We are working closely with the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) to provide?personal protective equipment (PPE) to all those that need it, including those working in homelessness services.

To ensure that those facing supply issues and conducting essential work receive the PPE they need, DHSC have set up a cross-government PPE board, that includes the Devolved Administrations, to prioritise requests for PPE. They are using a clinical framework based on the UK guidance to help make these prioritisation decisions and we are distributing this supply as quickly as possible.

This guidance can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/wuhan-novel-coronavirus-infection-prevention-and-control.

The Government has arranged a priority drop of millions of items of PPE to Local Resilience Forums (LRFs): local partnerships that bring together the NHS, councils and the police to coordinate the emergency response locally and plug local gaps. The LRFs are prioritising delivery to key frontline workers according to local need.