§ Mr. NichollsTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what estimate he has made of the number of rough sleepers in London in each of the last five years for which figures are available; and what forecasts he has made of numbers in future years. [40889]
§ Mr. RaynsfordIn the context of the Rough Sleepers Initiative, voluntary sector homelessness organisations, co-ordinated by Homeless Network who receive some of their funding from my Department, undertake regular single night head counts in parts of central London where rough sleeping is a major problem. Other parts of London may have been covered by one-off-single night counts of people sleeping rough but no reliable data exist for those areas showing trends over time. The figures for central London areas where regular counts have taken place are as follows:
intended for new investigators, (d) studentships and (e) fellowships, in 1997 and each of the two previous years. [40883]
§ Angela EagleResearch under the DETR Research Programme is carried out under contract and procured as far as possible by competitive tender. Contractors are generally teams with a principal investigator, rather than single individuals. Records often show only initials or professional titles of contract team members. It would entail unreasonable costs to inquire in retrospect about the sex of all contract team members for the last 3 years