§ Mr. BurstowTo ask the Secretary of State for Transport, Local Government and the Regions what research his Department has(a) commissioned in the last five years and (b) plans to commission into the causes of older homelessness. [24188]
§ Ms KeebleThere has been a proliferation of research into the causes of homelessness over the past decade, including recent studies on older people. The Government have announced that they are establishing a new homelessness directorate to bring together existing work to help homeless people as well as to develop new work to prevent homelessness and investigate its causes, as part of this consideration will be given to further research in this area.
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§ Mr. BurstowTo ask the Secretary of State for Transport, Local Government and the Regions what estimate his Department has made of the number of specialist hostel places available for single homeless women, broken down by region. [24187]
§ Ms KeebleInformation about hostel provision is not collected centrally and no estimates of specialist provision for women have been made. However, the hon. Member might be interested to know that information gathered on 3,387 people contacted by the contact and assessment teams in London during 2000–01 show that around 10 per cent, of rough sleepers are women, with around a fifth of this group being aged under 25.
§ Mr. BurstowTo ask the Secretary of State for Transport, Local Government and the Regions what estimates his Department has made of the number of people made homeless as a result of administrative errors and failures by housing benefit units. [24192]
§ Ms KeebleInformation reported to the Department relates to the number of households accepted under the homelessness provisions of Housing Acts as being eligible for assistance, unintentionally homeless and in priority need. Cases that are the result of rent arrears are identified, although the number of these attributable to delays or errors in housing benefit administration are not separately distinguished.
The Department's housing policy statement "Quality and Choice: A decent home for all—The way forward for housing" (December 2000) recognised that the fundamental challenge facing housing benefit is its administration. Problems with administering housing benefit can result in unacceptable levels of fraud and error, as well as backlogs of delayed claims. Our immediate priority has therefore been to work in partnership with local authorities to improve standards of administration. We have also set up a help fund to enable local authorities to formulate and implement improvement plans. In addition, we will introduce national performance standards to support the better administration of housing benefit from spring 2002.
The best value regime is also helping to drive up standards of delivery across all local authority services. Best value performance indicators in place since April 2000 include a measure of the average speed of processing housing benefit claims. Provisional and unaudited best value performance information published by the Department suggests that about a quarter of English local authorities took on average 60 days or longer to process new housing benefit claims in 2000–01. Final performance figures for 2000–01 will be published early in 2002.
§ Mr. BurstowTo ask the Secretary of State for Transport, Local Government and the Regions what baseline figures his Department has for the number of(a) officially recorded and (b) unofficial estimates of older homeless people (i) sleeping rough, (ii) in hostel accommodation, (iii) in move-on accommodation, (iv) in bed and breakfast accommodation and (v) in special needs accommodation. [24186]
§ Ms KeebleThe most recent street count showed that there were 532 people sleeping rough across England on any one night. We estimate that between 15 and 20 per cent, of those will be aged over 50. Information522W gathered by Housing Services Agency (HSA) shows that in London during 2000–01 the contact and assessment teams (CATs) contacted some 609 (17 per cent.) rough sleepers or former rough sleepers who are over 50-years-old.
Information gathered by Housing Services Agency shows that in London during 2000–01 there were 26 moves into permanent accommodation and 319 moves into temporary accommodation, including 180 moves into hostel accommodation by rough sleepers aged over 50 years. Due to the nature of rough sleeping some people will be recorded more than once in these figures as they may have been moved into a hostel, or other temporary accommodation, more than once during the year.
Due to the way the information is collected and the fluctuating pattern of rough sleeping by some people, it is not possible to provide exact figures on the number of older rough sleepers and former rough sleepers currently sleeping rough, in hostel accommodation, in move-on accommodation, in bed and breakfast or in special needs accommodation.
On 30 September 2001, the total number of households being accommodated by local housing authorities in bed-and-breakfast hotels under existing homelessness legislation was 12,290 and a further 9,480 households were being accommodated in hostels. Information is not held centrally on the proportion of these that are older homeless people.
Information is not held centrally on the number of older homeless people in special needs accommodation.