Asked by: Rebecca Long Bailey (Labour - Salford and Eccles)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to help improve educational outcomes for homeless children in temporary accommodation or experiencing rough sleeping.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
DLUHC is investing £1.2 billion through the Homelessness Prevention Grant over three years, including a £109 million top-up for 2024/25, to ensure that families can move out of temporary accommodation and into stable accommodation, as well as reducing the need for temporary accommodation by preventing homelessness before it occurs.
To help schools tackle the challenges facing disadvantaged pupils, including pupils who might be in temporary accommodation or experiencing homelessness, and to improve children’s educational outcomes, the department has provided pupil premium funding since 2011. Pupil premium funding is increasing to over £2.9 billion this financial year which will ensure that the most disadvantaged pupils receive the support they need to succeed at school.
In 2024/25, the department has targeted a greater proportion of schools’ National Funding Formula towards deprived pupils than ever before with over £4.4 billion of the formula allocated according to deprivation in 2024/25, and over £7.8 billion through additional needs factors based on deprivation, low prior attainment, English as an additional language and mobility. This is alongside various support programmes including free school meals, the National School Breakfast Club programme and the Holiday Activities and Food programme. The department is also targeting support at young people who most need help with the costs of staying in post-16 education and training, through the 16-19 bursary and has extended free meals to disadvantaged 16 to 18 year old students attending further education institutions.
The department is prioritising the attendance of vulnerable children in education, including those who are in temporary accommodation, by introducing stronger expectations of schools, trusts, and local authorities to work together to tackle absence set out in guidance that will become statutory in August 2024, including an expectation on schools to identify at-risk pupils and work with families to support absent students and, from September 2024, introducing a mandatory attendance data tool, allowing them to identify pupils at risk of persistent absence and to enable early intervention.
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Labour - Weaver Vale)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, whether he is taking steps with Cabinet colleagues to work across Departments on supporting people with multiple complex needs who are homeless; and what steps he is taking to support such people out of homelessness.
Answered by Felicity Buchan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Labour - Weaver Vale)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, if he will make an assessment of the potential impact of extending the move-on period from 28 to 56 days for refugees leaving asylum support on homelessness.
Answered by Felicity Buchan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.
Asked by: Fleur Anderson (Labour - Putney)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what recent steps his Department has taken to (a) improve the quality of and (b) increase the number of outreach programmes for people facing street homelessness.
Answered by Felicity Buchan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisoners in HMP Lewes were (a) released as street homeless and (b) released and recalled (i) once and (ii) multiple times in each of the last six months.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
We are unable to provide data on street homelessness beyond 31 March 2023 as that data is a subset of data due for future publication and releasing it at this time would breach official statistics publication rules, as outlined in the Code of Practice for Statistics. Data for the latest six-month period, October 2022-March 2023, is available is provided in table 1 below.
Table 1: Number not housed on the first night of release from HMP Lewes, with an accommodation status at release recorded as Homeless - Rough Sleeping by month of release, October 2022 to March 2023.
Month of Release | Number |
October | 9 |
November | 10 |
December | 11 |
January | 4 |
February | 10 |
March | 9 |
Total | 53 |
Notes:
1. These figures are drawn from administrative data systems. Although care is taken when processing and analysing the returns, the detail collected is subject to the inaccuracies inherent.
2. Data is consistent with metric CU150 Housed on the first night of custodial release, contained within the latest Performance Ratings publication, 2022-2023: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/prison-performance-ratings-2022-to-2023
3. In order to be counted in measure CU150, the release event must be found in both Prison-NOMIS and nDelius. Unmatched release events are excluded. (I.e., the figures provided might not include all cases).
4. Release events with a missing or obsolete status are treated as "negative" in this measure, as are release events with multiple statuses.
Data source: National Delius and Prison NOMIS
We are unable to provide data on releases and recall of offenders beyond 31 December 2023 as that data is a subset of data due for future publication and releasing it at this time would breach official statistics publication rules, as outlined in the Code of Practice for Statistics. Data for the latest six-month period, July 2023 - December 2023, is available is provided in table 2 below.
Table 2: The number of first-time releases from HMP Lewes from July- December 2023, and subsequent recalls by 31 December 2023
Month of release | Number of releases | Number of offenders recalled once | Number of offenders recalled more than once |
July | 47 | 17 | * |
August | 45 | 16 | 6 |
September | 42 | 11 | * |
October | 52 | 18 | 3 |
November | 49 | 10 | * |
December | 43 | 10 | 0 |
Notes:
1. Offenders are counted once in each month of release. There could be a handful of offenders counted twice across different months where they were released for the first time on different sentences.
2. Recalls are counted from date of release up to 31 December 2023. Where further recalls have occurred beyond 31 December 2023, these recalls are not included.
3. Given releases in later months have a shorter time for recalls to occur, direct comparisons across months are biased. The months have different lengths of time for recalls to occur.
4. Disclosure control: An asterisk (*) has been used to suppress values of one or two. This is to prevent the disclosure of individual information. Further suppression may be applied where needed.
5. Data quality: The figures in these tables have been drawn from administrative IT systems which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.
Data source: P-NOMIS and Public Protection Unit Database (PPUD)
We know that having a safe place to stay helps cut crime which is why we are investing in our transitional accommodation service so prison leavers can have a guaranteed 12 weeks of basic, temporary accommodation to provide a stable base on release.
Asked by: Rebecca Long Bailey (Labour - Salford and Eccles)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of providing free bus passes for homeless (a) adults and (b) children.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Department for Transport has made no such assessment. The English National Concessionary Travel Scheme (ENCTS) provides free off-peak bus travel to those with eligible disabilities and those of state pension age, currently sixty-six, and was set up primarily to help older and disabled people. ENCTS costs around £1 billion annually and any changes to the minimum statutory scheme would need to be carefully considered for their impact on the scheme’s financial sustainability.
Local authorities in England have the power to go beyond their statutory obligations and extend free bus travel to other groups that are eligible under ENCTS, which includes children under the age of 16 and 16-18 year olds in full time education. However, these discretionary concessions are not funded by central government but by local authorities from local resources, such as council tax. Since 2010/11, almost all of the travel concession authorities in England have offered some form of discretionary concession. Bus operators are also able to provide discretionary concessions on a commercial basis.
Asked by: Rebecca Long Bailey (Labour - Salford and Eccles)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of providing targeted support for (a) infant and (b) parental mental health while a family is experiencing homelessness.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
As part of NHS England’s Maternity and Neonatal Three-Year Delivery Plan, NHS England is working to rollout Maternal Mental Health Services for women experiencing mental health difficulties related to loss or trauma in the maternity or neonatal context. This may include those who experience post-traumatic stress disorder following birth trauma, perinatal loss, or severe fear of childbirth, known as tokophobia.
As of February 2024, 39 Maternal Mental Health Services have been established, which provide psychological therapy for women experiencing mental health difficulties related to their maternity experience. Every integrated care system area will soon have these services in place.
In December 2023, NHS England published new guidance for general practice (GPs) on the postnatal appointment women should be offered six to eight weeks after giving birth. This provides an important opportunity for GPs to listen to women in a discrete, supportive environment.
We also continue to engage with a number of other departments and representative groups to discuss what can be done to mitigate the effect of housing insecurity and homelessness on mental health and wellbeing.
Asked by: Steve McCabe (Labour - Birmingham, Selly Oak)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, pursuant to the Answer of 16 April 2024 to Question 20145 on Homelessness: Veterans, how often his Department meets with (a) officials and (b) ministers from the devolved Administrations to discuss veterans’ homelessness.
Answered by Felicity Buchan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)
I refer the Hon Member to the answer I gave to Question UIN 20145 on 16 April 2024.
Asked by: Rachel Hopkins (Labour - Luton South)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what information his Department holds on the number and proportion of prisoners that were released under the End of Custody Supervised License scheme who were homeless upon their release from prison in each month since October 2023.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
End of Custody Supervised Licence (ECSL) began in October 2023. Analysis of its use will be based on at least one year’s worth of data and published in line with the same approach we take for other statistical releases such as deaths of offenders in the community. We cannot provide any breakdowns of the ECSL cohort ahead of publication because they would give an early indication of that cohort and hence these statistics.
Release under ECSL follows the same planning and arrangements as release at the normal automatic release point and that includes making suitable arrangements for accommodation.
We know that having a safe place to stay helps cut crime which is why we are investing in our ground-breaking transitional accommodation service so prison leavers can have a guaranteed 12 weeks of basic, temporary accommodation to provide a stable base on release.
His Majesty’s Prisons and Probation Service has a statutory duty in England to refer someone at risk of homelessness to a local authority for assistance and we have worked closely with DLUHC on the design and delivery of its Accommodation for Ex-Offenders scheme.
In 2022/23, 86% of prisoners were accommodated on first night of release, up from 80% in 2019/20.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what discussions he has had with the Department for Communities in Northern Ireland on the number of people under the age of 21 who are living in temporary accommodation.
Answered by Felicity Buchan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)
DLUHC Ministers and officials engage regularly with their counterparts in the devolved administrations to discuss a range of issues, including tackling homelessness and rough sleeping.
I have recently visited Northern Ireland and met the Northern Ireland Housing Executive.