Data on rough sleeping and local housing authorities’ activities under homelessness legislation are collected at local authority rather than constituency level. Torbay constituency falls within Torbay unitary authority.
Information on rough sleeping has been collected since 1998. In Torbay in 1998 there were 31 rough sleepers. The last street count in 2007 found nine rough sleepers.
We have reduced rough sleeping by 75 per cent. since 1998. Our national baseline was 1,850 in 1998 and the latest headline figure based on local authority rough sleeper counts was 464 for 2009.
The numbers of households accepted as statutory homeless in Torbay unitary authority in 1997-98 and 2007-08 are 253 and 119 respectively. The number of households accommodated by the Torbay unitary authority in temporary accommodation as at 30 March 1997 is 25 and as at 30 September 2009 is 163.
In 2002, we put stronger legislation in place by ensuring that more vulnerable people who face homelessness are provided with help and accommodation by extending the categories of people who have a 'priority need for accommodation" under the homelessness legislation—hence why more people were placed in temporary accommodation.
We know we need to do more to help people into settled homes. That's why our strategy includes the challenging target of halving the number of people living in temporary accommodation to 50,500 by 2010.
We have allocated a total of £220 million to local authorities and voluntary organisations over the three years 2008-09 to 2010-11 to support their strategies for tackling and preventing homelessness in their area.
The Government continue to demonstrate a long-term commitment to affordable housing, which is why between June and November we approved more than £2.4 billion towards 41,000 new affordable homes in England. Of this funding over £3 million has been allocated to schemes for Torbay.
This includes the largest council house-building programme for nearly two decades and funding for housing associations to build more homes for affordable sale or rent, and thousands of first time buyers have also managed to get a foothold on the property ladder thanks to our homebuy schemes.