PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Temporary Accommodation: Standards (22 July 2019)

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what estimate he has made of the number of people living in temporary accommodation; and what steps he is taking to improve the living conditions of those people.

Asked by:
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Labour)

The total number of households living in temporary accommodation, provided by local authorities under their statutory homelessness duties is 83,700 as at the 31 December 2018.

Homelessness is a big priority for the government. In the rough sleeping strategy, the previous Secretary of State indicated the Government is committed to taking steps to tackle wider homelessness issues, including the numbers of families in Temporary Accommodation (TA) and poor-quality accommodation.

The Government has targeted funding streams focused on reducing the number of households in TA as part of our £1.2 billion spending programme. Earlier this year, we announced £19.5 million for 54 projects through the Private Rented Sector Access Fund that will enable thousands of households to be supported away from TA and into long term Private Rented accommodation.

We have also committed £37.8 million of funding to launch the London Collaboration Project (Capital Letters) - a project which works with London boroughs to improve the supply of homes, reduce the cost to local authorities of procuring these homes and achieve better outcomes for homeless families through a centralised procurement process.

We are working with other government departments to assess what more can be done to address the number of people in TA. This work is being overseen by the Ministerial Taskforce on homelessness and rough sleeping. This may result in joint Spending Review bids to address the issues of homelessness as well as its causes and consequences. We will consider the potential to publish a wider cross government action plan on homelessness in the future, which will build on the work we already have in train, ensure progress is made on wider issues relating to all forms of homelessness and homelessness prevention’

Answered by:
Mrs Heather Wheeler (Conservative)
24 July 2019