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Select committee: Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee

Recommendation 13

Sixth Report - Protecting the homeless and the private rented sector: MHCLG’s response to Covid-19 Published 31 Mar 2021 Paragraph 46 Addressed to Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government

Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee Impact of COVID-19 (Coronavirus) on homelessness and the private rented sector All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗

Recommendation (the committee's words)
We recommend that the Government creates a cross-Government task force to resolve the conflict between the commitment to end rough sleeping and the current policy on the no recourse to public funds condition. This will require collecting data on the number of people affected and their specific circumstances. It must involve both Ministers and officials from the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government and the Home Office with the goal of presenting a policy proposal which will help individuals with no recourse to public funds to be supported off the streets and prevented from returning. We suggest that policy options to be explored could include: abeyance while individuals in hardship are helped into the private rented sector and employment; placing a duty on local authorities to actively intervene and find solutions; or helping people return to their country of origin where that is their preferred option. The task force must be more than a talking shop; we would expect given the urgency of the Government’s 2024 deadline that the task force should report by the end of 2021, with its policy proposal in force by 2022.

From: Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, Sixth Report - Protecting the homeless and the private rented sector: MHCLG’s response to Covid-19 (HC 1329), paragraph 46, 31 March 2021

Government response

The government responded to the whole report on 25 May 2021 (deadline 31 May 2021).

Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.

The document published on 24 May 2021 is the government response to the Committee's report on COVID-19, homelessness and the private rented sector, but the text available here does not set out the government's position on the report's recommendations.

  • The response is to the Committee's sixth report of Session 2019 to 2021, following its inquiry into the impact of COVID-19 on homelessness and the private rented sector.
  • The page describes the Committee's inquiry as considering support for rough sleepers, the wider homeless population, renters and landlords, and as making recommendations about future support.
  • The full response (Ref: CP 439, 16 pages) is available as HTML and PDF. Its content on agreement, disagreement or specific commitments is not included in the text provided, so none is summarised here.

Read the government's response ↗ Report an error