Majority of capital’s 8,000 rough sleepers come from overseas

FEWER than half the rough sleepers on London’s streets are British, according to an official count.

Of the 8,096 registered homeless in the capital over one year, nearly 3,000 were from Eastern Europe, among them 1,546 Romanians. Just 3,271 proved to be British.

The figures for the 12 months to April 2016 were compiled by the Combined Homelessness and Information Network and published by the Department for Communities and Local Government. This week a report by the National Audit Office said the number of homeless families had gone up and was ‘likely to have been driven’ by welfare reforms.

However, its own count of rough sleepers did not mention that a high proportion were migrants. The NAO report said 88,401 households had applied for homelessness assistance in the 12 months to April 2017. Such households – often people who are evicted because they have not paid the rent or because they are regarded as troublemakers – are automatically rehoused.

Over the same period 77,240 households were living in temporary accommodation provided by councils. The NAO added: ‘There are many reasons why a person could become homeless. The risk is greatest, however, for households in areas of high economic activity on the margins of being able to pay market rents for their homes.’

The figures for London rough sleepers are collected by charities across a full year.

National figures, by contrast, are collected by councils across the country on a single night in June. On the national rough sleeping population – the people who have no roof to sleep under – the NAO said the 4,134 total had risen by 134 per cent since 2010.

The NAO did not mention that the way in which the national count of rough sleepers is conducted has been changed since then.

Until 2011 many councils routinely told the Department for Communities and Local

‘Many reasons for homelessness’

Government, which conducts the annual count on a night in mid-summer, that they had no rough sleepers.

Under the changes to the counting methods, these councils were told to submit estimates if they could not supply detailed numbers.

As a result nearly 3,000 of the 4,134 national count of rough sleepers were not actually observed but were numbered from estimates submitted by officials.

To gather numbers, councils usually rely on information given to them by local homelessness charities, who rely on state funding.

The DCLG report on numbers said that national figures have ‘missing data on nationality’. Some 908 of the 4,134 total were said to be non-British.