Temporary Accommodation: Swindon

Anne Snelgrove
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government how many people lived in temporary accommodation in Swindon in each year since 1995.

Yvette Cooper
Information about local authorities' actions under homelessness legislation is collected quarterly at local authority level, in respect of households rather than people.

Information reported each quarter by local authorities about their activities under homelessness legislation includes the number of households in temporary accommodation on the last day of the quarter. The figures include both those households who have been accepted as owed the main homelessness duty, and those for which enquiries are pending.

A summary table showing the total number of households in temporary accommodation, from 1997-98 to 2005-06, for each local authority (including Swindon,) was placed in the Library of the House on 23 October 2006.

Key data at local authority level are published in supplementary tables to our quarterly statistical release on statutory homelessness. These are placed in the Library each quarter, as well as published on our website. Data on the number of households in temporary accommodation in the Thamesdown district of Wiltshire, for years prior to 1997-98, are already available in the Library.

In January 2005 the Government set a target of halving the number of households in all forms of temporary accommodation used by local authorities to discharge their main duty under the homelessness legislation.