Refuges: Females

Rosie Cooper
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government how many recorded cases there were of women being housed in refuges and safe houses in West Lancashire constituency in 2006.

Yvette Cooper
The Department does not hold a total figure centrally.

Information about local authorities’ actions under homelessness legislation is collected quarterly at local authority level. The duty owed to a household accepted as eligible for assistance, unintentionally homeless and in priority need is to secure suitable accommodation. If a settled home is not immediately available the authority may secure temporary accommodation until settled accommodation is provided.

One type of temporary accommodation is women's refuges. A breakdown by local authority of reported households in women’s refuges under homelessness provisions at the end of December 2006 has been placed in the Library of the House. The West Lancashire constituency falls within West Lancashire district local authority.

Women may also enter refuges without going through the statutory homelessness route. Many women’s refuges receive Supporting People funding, and records of new entrants to Supporting People funded services are submitted by service providers on the Client Record form.

Data from the Client Record form are published on the Centre for Housing Research’s website, for financial years and at administrative authority level. This includes the number of new clients entering Supporting People funded women’s refuges, for service providers in each of the administrating authorities, including Lancashire county council, in 2006-07, in table 2.1: http://ggsrv-cold.st-andrews.ac.uk/spclientrecord/, (follow the links to “Latest Reports”, then “Reporting to Administering Authorities”).

It is important to note that imputation has not been made for cases when the Client Record form was not submitted, and that these figures only cover Supporting People funded services.