More action needed to stop rough sleeping

The government has achieved a "significant success" in reducing the number of recorded homeless, a new report has found.

While the National Audit Office welcomed progress towards targets on reducing rough sleeping and the number of families in bed and breakfast accommodation, it adds that there is no room for complacency and calls for further action to reduce the problem.

The NAO welcomed the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister's five year plan, but suggested that more effective ways are needed to deal with the wider causes of homelessness and to prevent it wherever possible.

Rough sleeping, use of Bed & Breakfast hotels to accommodate families and, more recently, new cases of homelessness have been falling.

But there are currently around 100,000 households who have been placed in temporary accommodation by local authorities under homelessness legislation, although over 80 per cent of these are in self-contained homes.

Since March 2002 the number of families with children in Bed & Breakfast accommodation has fallen by 80 per cent, and the number residing for more than six weeks has been reduced by 96 per cent.

"It is now enshrined in legislation that families with children should only be in Bed & Breakfast accommodation as an emergency measure, and even then for no longer than six weeks," said the NAO.

"Such accommodation is an expensive option, and many local authorities have saved money by switching to other forms of temporary accommodation.

"The Homelessness and Housing Support Directorate should help local authorities build on this experience so that, where appropriate, other homeless people can be moved out of Bed & Breakfast accommodation."

Commenting on the report, NAO chief Sir John Bourn said: "I am pleased that efforts to improve the lives of homeless families with children and of rough sleepers have been successful, and that new cases of homelessness started to fall in 2004.

"But it remains a real concern that homelessness applications are high, and that such large numbers of people are living in temporary accommodation.

"The government’s targets for families and rough sleepers may have been met but further efforts are required to improve the lives of other homeless groups."