Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department is taking to ensure compliance with statutory homelessness data returns.

Local authorities are bound by the conditions of the Homelessness, Rough Sleeping and Domestic Abuse Grant to submit all Homelessness Case Level Information Collection (H-CLIC) returns for each financial year. You can find the grant conditions on gov.uk here.

MHCLG tracks and monitors H-CLIC submissions quarterly and escalates concerns where there has been data missing or unpublishable data for consecutive and/or multiple quarters. The H-CLIC submission is a statutory requirement and forms part of the Single Data List, which sets out the datasets local authorities are required to submit to central government. As set out in the grant conditions of the HomelesR, there are financial penalties for local authorities that fail to comply with the requirement to submit H-CLIC data. Where there are rare, exceptional circumstances which affect local authorities’ ability to meet this condition and they are taking steps to rectify gaps in reporting adherence, MHCLG may at its discretion agree to waive the financial deduction.