Frank Field – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Communities and Local Government

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Frank Field on 2016-01-25.

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, how many rough sleepers have been helped by the No Second Night Out Across England programme; and what proportion of those people were successfully kept off the streets.

Mr Marcus Jones

Rapid intervention is vital to identifying new rough sleepers and ensuring that the support is in place to help them off the streets quickly. The longer someone sleeps rough, the greater the risk that they will become entrenched on the streets. That is why we invested in rolling out No Second Night Out across England through the £20 million Homelessness Transition Fund. Over two-thirds of rough sleepers in 20 key areas outside London did not spend a second night on the streets.

The Government is committed to protecting the most vulnerable in society. But one person without a home is one too many, which is why we will increase central investment over the next four years to £139 million for innovative programmes to prevent and reduce homelessness and rough sleeping. We have also protected homelessness prevention funding for local authorities, through the provisional local government finance settlement, totalling £315 million by 2019-20.

Data on the number of people helped through the Fund is in an independent evaluation, published by Homeless Link: http://www.homeless.org.uk/sites/default/files/site-attachments/Three%20Years%20of%20Transition%20-%20summary%20evaluation%20report.pdf.