Tackling homelessness is a key priority for this Government. We work closely with local authorities and voluntary sector organisations to drive forward our homelessness agenda.
We have allocated £200 million to local authorities and voluntary organisations over the next three years to tackle and prevent homelessness in their area—the biggest ever cash injection for homelessness services. In addition, a further £80 million capital funding has been allocated through our Places of Change Programme to work in partnership with voluntary organisations to build on the success of improving hostels and day centres.
We also announced in September a £200 million mortgage rescue scheme, which will help up to 6,000 of the most vulnerable households facing repossession over the next two years.
Homelessness prevention measures funded by Communities and Local Government have had a major impact. In the last five years, we have more than halved the number of homeless households in priority need accepted by local authorities; we are now making serious inroads into the backlog of households in temporary accommodation, and local authorities are making good progress on meeting our target to halve the number of households in temporary accommodation to 50,500 by 2010 with one third of authorities having already met the target; we are maintaining levels of rough sleeping at historical low levels and we are now developing an updated Rough Sleeping Strategy that builds on 10 years of success and aim to publish it later in the year.
We established the National Youth Homelessness Scheme (NYHS) jointly led by Centrepoint and YMCA England. NYHS has established nine regional centres of excellence to offer practical examples to neighbouring authorities of effective service models, and a website and knowledge base to offer accessible information and practical initiatives on preventing and tackling youth homelessness.
In addition, local authorities are making good progress on the commitment that by 2010, no 16 or 17-year-olds should be placed in bed-and-breakfast accommodation by a local authority under the homelessness legislation, except in an emergency. At the end of June 2008, there were 420 16 and 17-year-olds in bed-and-breakfast accommodation (compared to the September 2006 estimated baseline of 1,000) with only 160 accommodated for more than six weeks.