FOI - Homeless deaths [Jan 2023]

I am writing to you under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to request the following information.

Please can I request the number of deaths from 1^st January 2022 – 31st December 2022 (inclusive) in each of the following housing situations in your local authority area:

• accommodation for homeless people commissioned by your council, including hostels and supported accommodation for people identified as rough sleeping or with a history of rough sleeping
• exempt accommodation
• temporary accommodation commissioned by your local authority
• supported accommodation for homeless young people commissioned by your council
• rough sleeping or with no fixed abode

Where you have access to any of the following information, please include the cause of death or suspected cause of death, date of death, the person’s gender, the person’s age when they died, their ethnicity, and their immigration status.  If you cannot provide any of this additional information, then please just provide the number of deaths.

Response

The GLA is not a local authority and it does not collect data on all deaths for anyone who is sleeping rough in London. Therefore, the information provided relates only to people who were working with services commissioned by the GLA at the time of their death.

Please note that in previous years, the GLA has submitted responses related only to accommodation commissioned by the authority. On this occasion, the GLA is also submitting information on deaths of people supported by GLA commissioned services, where the accommodation itself is for people with a history of rough sleeping but is not commissioned/funded by the GLA. This primarily relates to the Tenancy Sustainment Teams, who support people who have previously slept rough but now have tenancy agreements in housing association properties in the community they accessed via the Clearing House. The inclusion of this data is intended to demonstrate a broader view of deaths amongst people with a history of rough sleeping. However, it should be noted that these people may have been settled in these properties for many years since their experience of homelessness.

I have responded to the request using a modified version of the excel template as it’s considered that the additional fields of ‘Gender’, ‘Ethnicity’ and ‘Immigration Status’, increase the likelylihood that this information could be personally identifiable and is exempt from disclosure under s.40 (Personal Information) of the Freedom of Information Act.

The ‘Type of accommodation’ section has been left blank in cases where the accommodation situation did not suitably fit into the categories you have provided. Further detail can be found in the notes section.