Public opinion: Your blogs

A more honest approach to counting rough sleepers is needed

Homelessness is in evidence all around us and yet, surprisingly the government currently only recognises 464 rough sleepers throughout the entire country.

It is impossible to see these figures as realistic, when there are so many without a roof over their heads this Christmas. If we want to tackle the problem of rough sleeping effectively it is important to be realistic about the size of the problem - how can we confront something when we have no idea of its extent?

We've been calling on the government to properly recognise the number of rough sleepers for several years, but ministers have instead been satisfied to artificially massage down the numbers in what can only be described as a dishonest fashion. This approach undermines some of the great work done by homelessness organisations because no one seriously believes that there are only 464 people sleeping on our streets.

Homelessness is a complex problem and, to be fair, so is counting the number of people sleeping rough, but part of the problem is caused by the government’s insistence on 'bracketing down' of the official homeless statistics. This deliberate undercounting is fundamentally dishonest because it either ignores or undercounts the returns from local authorities who do not carry out a more formal street count. This disingenuous approach minimises the official numbers, masks the true picture and thereby hinders the fight against homelessness.

We know that the best kind of administration is open and transparent, and so I pledge that a Conservative government will require an honest street count to take place, introducing measures to ensure that we have an accurate picture of the problem and banning the practice of 'bracketing down’. This approach builds on the work of the Conservative Homelessness Foundation which I launched with David Cameron 18 months ago and emphasises the Conservative party's belief in the need for an honest and transparent approach to governing and tackling poverty.

A civilised society can be measured by the way in which it treats its citizens in the most dire state of need and if you want to improve the lives of those that are homeless we must at least be realistic about the scale of the problem.