Tories will not round down council estimates
Conservatives to overhaul rough sleeper counts
Methods for counting the number of rough sleepers on the streets would be overhauled by a Conservative government, the shadow housing minister has said.
Grant Shapps said the Tories would not support the practice of ‘bracketing’ down local authority estimates. Currently the Communities and Local Government department rounds down any estimate under 10 to zero.
‘If we are going to have a target, we have to be actually counting the number of rough sleepers in the first place,’ he said. ‘I understand that we will not solve every single problem: that there will still be people who end up on the streets.’
The government has set itself a target of eradicating rough sleeping by 2012.
David Clark, trustee for rough sleeping charity The Simon Community, said: ‘We would welcome any move towards common sense rather than manipulation of figures.
‘However, there is a lot cynicism about the way headcounts are done by local authorities, and the way they then handle those figures.’
A London Councils spokesperson said: ‘Holding correct information about numbers of homeless people will help councils provide them with better support so we welcome this move in principle.
‘However it may be difficult to achieve accurate counts in areas where sleeping rough is less common and sites used less well known.’
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