ATLEU response to homelessness consultation

ATLEU’s experience of assisting victims of trafficking and modern slavery over the past five years is that they face multiple barriers to obtaining housing assistance. There is a need for housing authorities to be better informed about trafficking and modern slavery and the impact of these crimes on victims.

The government is 'implementing the most ambitious legislative reform in decades, the Homelessness Reduction Act, which will commence in April 2018. The Act is designed to significantly reform England’s homelessness legislation by placing duties on local authorities to intervene at earlier stages to prevent homelessness in their areas. It also requires local authorities to provide homelessness assistance to all those affected, not just those who are protected under existing legislation. As part of the Act’s implementation the government is revising the existing statutory code of guidance. This will provide updated guidance to local authorities on how they should exercise their homelessness functions and apply the legislation in practice.'
 
You need to respond to this consultation by 5pm on 11 December – more information can be found here. 
 
However if you do not have time to respond, there is real power in numbers, so please consider sending a short paragraph by Monday to H&SEnquiries@communities.gsi.gov.uk where you can simply write 'The ---- NGO endorses the responses to your consultation, written by ATLEU and Hope for Justice'.

Read our response here.