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

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, how many households in the London Borough of Southwark applied for housing assistance under the homelessness legislation of the Housing Act 1996 in the last 12 months.

In the calendar year 2014, 792 households were accepted as owed a main homelessness duty to secure accommodation. These statistics are taken from the quarterly P1E forms completed by local authorities in England, which have been published at the following location;

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-homelessness.

The homelessness legislation in England provides one of the strongest safety nets in the world for families with children and vulnerable people who become homeless through no fault of their own. Since 2010, the Government has invested over £500 million to prevent and tackle all forms of homelessness and this has helped local authorities prevent over 700,000 households from becoming homeless.