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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the provision by local authorities of health, social and fitness programmes connected to accommodation for homeless people; and what funding they provide to support such programmes.

The Government is determined to prevent and reduce the levels of homelessness, and provide people with all the support they need to rebuild their lives.

Whilst we have made no specific assessment, we know the importance of taking a truly holistic approach to tackling homelessness. It is for this reason we have established a cross government taskforce, whose membership includes the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, which will develop a strategy to end rough sleeping, before looking at wider homelessness issues. We have also launched pilots of Housing First in key regions to put some of the most hard-to-reach rough sleepers in accommodation and help them recover from complex health issues, for example substance abuse and mental health difficulties.

This builds on important action the government has taken to tackle homelessness, including implementing the Homelessness Reduction Act, which means more people will get the help they need sooner, and providing over £1.2 billion to prevent and reduce homelessness and rough sleeping through to 2020.