asked the Secretary of State for the Environment how many households have been accepted as homeless, by each local authority, for each year from 1979 to 1986.
I have today placed in the Library, tables giving the numbers of households for whom local authorities in England reported accepting responsibility for securing accommodation during each year from 1981 to 1986. Information for the years 1979 and 1980 is available in "Local Housing Statistics" issues No. 54 (table 14), 59 (table 9) and 62 (table 13), copies of which are in the Library. A new reporting system was introduced for non-metropolitan districts in the fourth quarter of 1980 and for metropolitan districts and the London boroughs in the third quarter of 1982, so that the figures are not directly comparable over the whole period.