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

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, pursuant to the Answer of 13 September 2016 to Question 44006, if his Department will collect constituency level data on the number of people rough sleeping.

We have no plans to collect constituency level data on rough sleeping. Rough sleeping statistics are available at a local authority level, and can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/homelessness-statistics#rough-sleeping

It is vital that we are frank and open about the scale of rough sleeping. We overhauled the methodology for counting rough sleepers in 2010, so that now every council has to report the scale of the problem in their area.

Of course, nobody should ever have to sleep rough, or become homeless in the first place. That is why we launched a £40 million Homelessness Prevention Programme, including a £10 million rough sleeping fund to help new rough sleepers, or people at imminent risk of sleeping rough, and £10 million of funding for Social Impact Bonds to provide targeted support for entrenched single homeless people.