John Healey – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Communities and Local Government
The below Parliamentary question was asked by John Healey on 2016-02-19.
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that the statistics it produces on homelessness and rough sleeping comply with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics in relation to each of the requirements identified by the UK Statistics Authority in its report, Assessment of compliance with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics: Statistics on Homelessness and Rough Sleeping in England, published in December 2015.
Mr Marcus Jones
Departmental statisticians are currently using the report to help plan future developments in homelessness statistics.
In 2010, we overhauled the way local authorities count rough sleepers, to provide a more accurate assessment of the scale of the problem and reflect the reality on the streets.
Under the Labour Government, including when the rt hon Member was Housing Minister, the process did not actually require all local authorities to submit a return, meaning the number of rough sleepers was consistently under estimated.
