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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of immigration on the increase in rough sleeping in England since 2013.

The Government has not made an assessment of the impact of immigration on the number of people sleeping rough.

However, national street counts and intelligence driven estimates of people sleeping rough are conducted every year in autumn and these take account of an individual’s nationality. The most recent data (for England) is from the autumn 2018 annual street count and estimate, which returned a total figure of 4,677 rough sleepers in England - showing a fall in numbers for the first time in 8 years - 1,048 of these self-reported as non-UK nationals.

To tackle this issue, we are making £5 million of funding available to help local areas support non-UK national rough sleepers off the streets. This funding will complement the projects which we have already funded through the £100 million Controlling Migration Fund (CMF) for local authorities to work with non-UK nationals who sleep rough. Further CMF funding allocations will be announced shortly.

This Government is committed to reducing homelessness and rough sleeping. No one should ever have to sleep rough. That is why last summer we published the cross-government Rough Sleeping Strategy which sets out an ambitious £100 million package to help people who sleep rough now, but also puts in place the structures that will end rough sleeping once and for all. The Government has now committed over £1.2 billion to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping over the spending review period.