Homeless People: Prevention of Deaths — House of Lords, 2019-10-01
Topic: Housing
James Younger (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will now repeat in the form of a Statement the Answer given to an Urgent Question today by my honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government in the other place. The Statement is as follows: "Mr Speaker, let me say first and foremost that every single death on our streets is a tragedy. Today’s statistics have provided us all with a stark reminder that there is so much more to be done. Every death on our streets is one too many, and this Government will work tirelessly to ensure that lives are not needlessly cut short. The fact that an estimated 726 people—mothers, fathers, siblings; all somebody’s loved one—died while homeless in 2018 will concern not only every Member of this House but everyone up and down the country As you will know, this Government are committed to putting an end to rough sleeping by 2027 and halving it by 2022. We changed the law to help make this happen. In April 2018, the Homelessness Reduction Act—some of the most ambitious legislation in this area in decades—came into force. We now have a year’s worth of evidence, which shows that more people are being supported earlier, and this is having a clear impact on the prevention of homelessness Last year, the Government published the first rough sleeping strategy, underpinned by £1.2 billion of funding, which laid out how we will work towards ending rough sleeping for good. Indeed, last year we reversed the trend when we saw a reduction in rough sleeping. A key element of this was the rough sleeping initiative. A total of £76 million has been invested in over 200 areas. This year, the rough sleeping initiative will fund 750 additional staff and approximately 2,600 new bed spaces Next year, we are going further. We will be providing a further £422 million to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping. This is a £54 million increase in funding from the previous year—a real-terms increase of 13% The cold weather period is a particularly difficult time for those sleeping rough, so the Government have launched a second year of the cold weather fund. We are making £10 million available to local authorities to support rough sleepers off the streets. This will build on last year’s fund, which helped relieve more than 7,000 individuals from rough sleeping over the winter These statistics have reminded us of the fateful impact of substance and alcohol misuse. We know that the use of new psychoactive substances—so-called NPS—is rising. These are dangerous drugs with unpredictable effects and that is why it is so important that people get the support they need. In 2019, we brought forward new training for front-line staff to help them engage with and support rough sleepers under the influence of such substances, and we are working with the Home Office to ensure that rough sleepers are considered in the forthcoming alcohol strategy, which will focus on vulnerable people There is so much more to be done. Our work is continuing, our funding is increasing, and our determination is unfaltering. We are committed to making rough sleeping a thing of the past".