FOI - Refugees Sleeping Rough [Feb 2025]

Your request 

Demographics of Refugees Sleeping Rough

• Data on the nationalities, age groups, and family structures of refugees whobecame homeless after leaving Home Office accommodation in 2024 and early 2025.
• The proportion of refugees granted asylum who subsequently became homelessdue to systemic barriers, such as language difficulties, lack of employment opportunities, or challenges accessing housing support.

Impact of Rough Sleeping Initiative (RSI) Funding

• Outcomes achieved through the Rough Sleeping Initiative funding (2022-2025),including:
• The number of individuals assisted.
• The number of individuals moved into permanent housing.
• Employment outcomes for those supported by these initiatives.

Barriers and Effectiveness of Initiatives

• Reports identifying the reasons for the limited success of the current 28-daymove-on period in preventing homelessness, including recommendations for improvement.
• Assessments of the effectiveness of partnerships between councils and voluntary organizations in providing housing and support to refugees.

Future Projections and Policy Impacts

• Internal forecasts for refugee homelessness numbers in London for 2025,considering:
• Increased asylum decisions.
• Reduced reliance on hotel accommodations for refugees.
• Evaluations or impact assessments comparing the current 28-day move-on period with the proposed 56-day period, particularly regarding its potential to address homelessness among vulnerable groups.

Our response

1.1.Please see Appendix 1, a CHAIN report in an excel document, and see tab ‘People leaving asylum support’.

Information about the report

CHAIN (Combined Homelessness and Information Network) is commissioned and funded by the Mayor of London and managed by Homeless Link. It is a multi-agency database recording information about people sleeping rough and the wider street population in London. Inputting users of the system are professionals working in street outreach teams and other rough sleeping services.

Inputting users do record self-disclosed nationality information and age of people found rough sleeping. Family structures are not recorded.

When someone is found rough sleeping for the first time, or the first time after a long gap in their rough sleeping, their last settled base is asked and recorded (if known/disclosed). To provide the data that best meets the needs of your request, the report includes all new and returning rough sleepers whose last settled base was reported as asylum support accommodation (often referred to as Home Office accommodation or previously known as NASS) and whose cause of departure was something other than a negative decision.

1.2. Please note we do not hold the information requested. CHAIN does not specifically record if someone became homeless due to systematic barriers. It does record someone’s preferred language; however, this is for the purpose of professionals to best communicate with that person rather than recording if language was a factor in their homelessness. Similarly, employment information can be recorded but it is not a mandatory field and inputting is relatively low. There is a function for inputting users to record if a person rough sleeping has approached a local council’s housing options service, but again this does not indicate if this was a factor in someone’s homelessness.

2. Based on the information we hold at the time of this FOI request, the cumulative number of outcomes since April 2022 in relation to individuals assisted by all GLA funded services for which funding came fully or partly from the Rough Sleeping Initiative funding (RSI 2022-2025) has so far been 17,796. Please note that many of these services have received RSI (2022-2025) funding as well as core GLA funding, and in some cases additional central Government funding. We do not hold the data disaggregating exactly how many individuals have been assisted solely through RSI funding. Number of individuals assisted is understood as number of individuals the services have worked with or supported in the period- exact wording of each service’s relevant Key Performance Indicator (KPI) vary. In most cases the data covers from Q1 2022/23 to Q2 2024/25 as most services did not yet report on their outcomes for Q3 2024/25 at the date of this FOI request. Please note we have used either data from the services’ monitoring reports or, for those services that only worked with clients with a CHAIN record, we have used a CHAIN report confirming the total number clients who stayed at the service or had any event recorded by it during the period. Do also please note that an individual will often have contact with multiple services during their rough sleeping episode (for example, with an outreach service, with an immigration advice service for rough sleepers and an accommodation service). Therefore, the outcomes for more than one service could be in relation to the same individual but given many of these services record their contacts on their own case management system we are not able to confirm unique individuals across all the services. Moreover, some services will be reporting KPIs based on number of people supported each quarter, which means there are duplicates when adding the data annually and across several years.

In regards, to individuals moved into permanent housing, please note that services inputting on CHAIN can record accommodation outcomes there, including long-term accommodation outcomes. These outcomes are reported on quarterly and annually and are publicly available;

• Website: Rough sleeping in London (CHAIN reports) - London Datastore
• Latest report: Quarter 3 2024-25, published on 31st January. The accommodation data is section 8, pages 18-19 of the Greater London report. This is published in a PDF version for London as a whole, and for some specific boroughs.

Employment outcomes, as mentioned above, are not often recorded on CHAIN. This is partly because the employment field is not mandatory, therefore inputting is low, and because many people get employment support once in accommodation and most accommodation services do not record their data on CHAIN1. There are also specific employment focused charities in the homelessness sector who again do not use CHAIN as their recording system. Rough sleeping services supporting those in accommodation might include outcomes around referring their clients to appropriate services to address their education, training, volunteering or employment needs- but they are less likely to offer direct employment support. Only one of the GLA services funded by RSI 2022/2025 since July 2023 included an element of direct employment support for a specific cohort that could lead to employment outcomes with 34 people receiving more than 3 sessions of employment support and 15 people starting work as a result of that support.

3. In relation to both 3.1. reports identifying the reasons for the limited success of the current28-day move on period in preventing homelessness, including recommendations for improvement, and 3 .2. assessments of the effectiveness of partnerships between councils and voluntary organizations in providing housing and support to refugees, please see below links to published documents, attached documents or relevant extracts of documents that the GLA has produced or that have been shared with GLA officers:
i. Please see attached as Appendix 2 the final version of the GLA report called Asylum Roadmap: Lessons Learned in London - for HASC. The version below is the final version as it has been submitted to the Home Affairs Select Committee in relation to their enquiry on Asylum Accommodation;
ii. Please see attached as Appendix 3 Power Point presentation from Bridges Outcomes Partnerships on their London Refugee Services;
iii. Please see attached as Appendix 4 a report from Bridges Outcomes Partnerships, Crisis and SHP on their Brent Refugee Service;

iv. Please see the Microsoft Word - FINAL Social Integration Strategy.docx (london.gov.uk)
v. Please see Asylum Welcome Toolkit | London City Hall
vi. Please see Refugee Council’s reports: Keys to the City: How the next Mayor of London can help end refugee homelessness and Keys to the City 2024: Ending refugee homelessness in London;

vii. Please see in Appendix 5 relevant extracts from the following reports:
a. Asylum Welcome in London-full report;
b. Asylum Welcome in London- summary of findings;
c. Research Study on the Needs, Experiences & Capacities of People Seeking Asylum in London;

4.1. In relation to your question on internal forecasts for refugee homelessness numbers in London for 2025, considering increased asylum decisions and/or reduced reliance on hotel accommodations for refugees, please note that there are no such GLA internal forecasts for refugee homelessness numbers in London for 2025.

4.2. In relation to your last request on evaluations of the 56 days move-on period, please note that the change has only taken place in December 2024 and that the Home Office have confirmed their intention to evaluate it and publish interim results in March. Please find attached Annex 6 which confirms Home Office’s intention to undertake an evaluation.