It is estimated that at any point in time there are around 700 people sleeping rough in Great Britain, which equates to around 7,000 people over the period of one year. Rough sleepers meet the legal definition of homelessness as they do not have secure or adequate accommodation.
Description | People sleeping rough on the streets. |
| Rationale for inclusion in Hidden Homelessness definition | Rough sleepers clearly meet the legal definition of homelessness. |
| Risk of homelessness | High - as above, rough sleepers clearly meet the legal definition of homelessness. |
| Issues relating to subgroups | None. |
| Overlap with other groups | Many of the people sleeping rough some but not all of the time will be the same as those in other categories of homelessness. For example, someone who sometimes sleeps rough may well also sometimes be staying in a hostel or on a temporary basis with friends or relatives. |
| Estimated numbers | Around 700 on any one night.[1] This equates to around 7,000 over the period of a year. |
| Issues relating to the calculation | There are currently no national records of the flow of rough sleepers and most areas do not have such local records. Rather, estimates for the numbers of rough sleepers are only available on a somewhat ad hoc basis via particular one-off data collections which are typically made on a ‘snapshot' basis (i.e. the number of rough sleepers on a given night or a given week. Any daily ‘snapshot' count will be smaller than the total number of people who sleep rough at some point in any year, with some evidence suggesting a factor of 10.[2] Using this scaling factor would give a total estimate of around 7,000 people sleeping rough at some time during a given year. |
| Data source | Specific surveys as referenced in the end note. |
| Adequacy of the calculation | Medium - while some of the precise estimates above are out-of-date and therefore subject to considerable uncertainty, it is clear that the overall scale of rough sleeping is relatively small. |
[1] For England, the latest estimate is 500 people on any single night as of June 2006 - see the DCLG website on rough sleeping estimates in England.
For Scotland, the latest estimate appears to be for October 2003 by the Scottish Executive: 328 people sleeping rough at some time in any given week. Previous analysis by the Scottish Executive suggests that the number sleeping rough on any single night is around a quarter of the weekly total, i.e. around 80.
For Wales, the latest estimate appears to be for 1999 by Rough Sleepers Cymru, an alliance of Welsh homelessness organisations: around 150 people on any single night.
[2] Broadway, which manages the CHAIN database, found that 3112 clients were contacted by outreach teams in London in 2004/05. The benefits and limitations of assessing the numbers of people sleeping rough through counts on a single night were discussed in detail in the evaluation of RSI (Randall and Brown, 1999).
Page last modified on 05/09/2007 at 18:12
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