Grant Shapps proactively investigates
issues of national concern and frequently publishes the research in
the form of papers and reports. You can find a selection of his work below
and where appropriate you can download a copy of each report.
The major reports shown
below are available for instant download in
PDF format.
WOMEN AND HOMELESSNESS
A
report into the dramatic rise in the number of
women stranded without homes
3rd
August 2008
Report includes
144,000 women appeared on council waiting lists in 2007, up
from 80,000 in 2003, a 43% increase.
The number of women being put into temporary accommodation,
including B&Bs, has risen steadily between 2003 and 2007,
from 16,127 to 22,428. This represents a 44% increase in the
use of temporary accommodation.
More and more women are being forced to wait in B&B
accommodation for more than six weeks, with rising from 399
in 2003 to 1328 in 2008, a 332% increase.
The number of number of spaces in women only hostels has
stalled with only 46 new rooms becoming available between
2005 and 2008.
170 out of 248 councils have no hostel accommodation purely
for women.
Due to the way the Department of Communities and Local
Government (CLG) collect information, data on the gender of
applicants for housing is often unrecorded or unavailable,
meaning that the situation women face is not recognised by
the government.
CRUMBLING FOUNDATIONS A report into Labour's Failures in Social Housing
24th April 2008
Report includes
After over a decade in power the Government has failed to
build more homes and it has dramatically failed those on the
growing council house waiting list.
Almost 1.7million households are now on the social housing
waiting list.
This has increased by 64% in the last ten years, and by
40,000 in the last year alone.
The number of homes built by local authorities has collapsed
to just 283 in 2006.
130,000 children are homeless - double that of ten years ago
- most as a direct result of the lack of social housing.
Private house-building has also fallen in the last year.
Just 53% of the dwellings built in 2006/7 were houses - down
from 80% in 2000/1 . Creating a glut of flats and not enough
family homes.
The Government is failing to meet their target of building
200,000 homes per annum - just 167,577 were built in 2006/7.
The Government has no realistic chance of meeting their
target of 3 million homes by 2020
The report is downloadable
here as well as
a breakdown of the regional data
here.
PRISON BREAK Breaking the prison to homelessness cycle
6th
March 2008
Report includes
12,000 prisoners were released onto the street with nowhere
to go in 2005/06.
1,122 prisoners were released into
homelessness from high security prisons despite much higher
reoffending rates for those who do not have a roof over
their heads.
78,197 prisoners have been released
with nowhere to go in the last four years. This is the
equivalent to almost the entire current size of the prison
population.
In the last four years, nearly one
quarter of prisoners have been released homeless.
Stable accommodation can reduce
re-offending by up to 20% by reducing the likelihood of so
called 'bed and breakfast crime' where ex-prisoners
re-offend in order to get a roof over their heads.'
Listen to Today Program coverage
of reports release
here.
ROUGHLY SLEEPING
How a black
hole in the street count leads to a systematic
underestimate of the number of rough sleepers.
8th November 2007
Report includes
Official Government statistics dramatically underestimate
the number of rough sleepers.
The number of people sleeping rough is nearly 3 times
greater than admitted in official government figures.
A flaw in the method of counting those sleeping rough has
resulted in the official nightly count being 498 rough
sleepers. However, this report reveals that a more accurate
estimate is 1,300 in England alone.
The current system requires Local
Authorities to provide a rough sleepers estimate between the
bracket of, for example, 0 and 10. However the number is
then automatically reduced to zero, thereby dramatically
underestimating the number of people sleeping rough each
night.
The
report is downloadable
here
and you can
download
the raw data spreadsheet
here.
THE
COMPLETE GERM MAP OF BRITAIN
How the level
of C-Difficile has been consistently underreported in Britain
because the government only requires data for over 65s to be
included in the official data.
31st May 2007
Report includes...
• The data collection error that means that 1 in 6 C-Diff cases
is never reported in official statistics
• A problem on the increase across the age range
• Which hospitals have the most C-Difficile with a detailed
‘Germ Map’ of Britain
THE
TAGGING GAME
How convicted
criminals wearing electronic tags are now four times more
likely to commit crime compared with when the Home Detention
Curfew
scheme was originally trialled.
POLICE ON THE BEAT
A
comprehensive new study into the alarming
level of assaults on front-line Police Officers.
26th April 2007
In 2006 a British Police Officer was assaulted on our streets
every 20 minutes. Despite 50 Home Offices Bills and a multitude
of other legislation it's becoming clear that treating the
symptoms by providing training and protective equipment for our
police isn't going to be enough. The report concludes that what
is required is a look at how society itself needs to change.
Gershon but not forgotten
A short study
into the effects of the Gershon Report
and Gordon Brown’s hidden civil servants.
21st
March 2007
This report entitled 'Gershon But Not Forgotten' studies the
progress of the July 2004 Gershon Report in the light of fresh
evidence acquired through Parliamentary Questions, National
Statistic Office and National Audit Office studies. The
Government, and in particular the Chancellor Gordon Brown, have
consistently claimed that they are on course to meet the targets
set out by the Efficiency Review, is this actually the case?
THE MESSY BUSINESS OF CONCEPTION:
How
The Postcode Lottery In NHS IVF Treatment Is Creating
'Baby Boundaries' For Childless Couples.
March 2007
In
February 2004 the then Secretary of State for Health, John Reid
MP, announced that at least one cycle of IVF would become widely
available on the NHS for childless couples. Three years later
and the actual picture across the country is confused with
evidence suggesting that Primary Care Trusts are tending to
withdraw from providing IVF on the NHS.
This report represents the most comprehensive study of IVF
treatment nationwide and concludes that the situation is muddled
and confused for those seeking infertility treatment on the NHS.
REPORT INTO THE REASONS FOR THE NHS CANCELLING
1,000 OPERATIONS PER DAY A comprehensive investigation looks into what's behind
all those cancelled operations.
October 2006
The
NHS cancels 1,000 operations every single day, but surprisingly
the reasons are less to do with insufficient staff or a lack of
beds and more about administrative errors and dirty instruments.
Detailed data obtained by MP Grant Shapps surveys the country's
health providers and discovers some shocking trends in elective
surgery cancellation.
UNDERPERFORMANCE OF THE
ASSETS RECOVERY AGENCY Set up by Tony Blair, the ARA has cost £60 million to date
but has only recovered £8.3 million.
June 2006
Launched in a blaze of publicity, the Assets Recovery Agency was
intended to have criminals quaking in their boots. Three years
on and this report by Grant Shapps MP revealed that the Agency
had cost four times more to run than it had ever recovered,
thereby breaking its own key target of being self-financing.
Shortly after this report was published in June 2006 the head of
the ARA resigned and in January 2007 the Government announced
that it would merge the ARA into the Serious Organised Crime
Agency (SOCA). An early demise for the Agency that Tony Blair
claimed would put an end to the 'champagne lifestyles’ that many
criminals have been enjoying.
Read Tony Blair's Daily Express ARA launch article from Feb 2003
here.
Download the BBC File On 4 which partially attributes the demise
of the Assets Recovery Agency to the Shapps report
here. This is an MP3.
You can play the programme directly by clicking the play button
under the report.
REPORT INTO REGIONAL INCONSISTENCIES REGARDING RETENTION OF
INNOCENT CHILDREN'S DNA DATA ACROSS ENGLAND AND WALES How the Government have allowed 24,000 children who have never
been charged or cautioned with any crime to remain on the
National Police DNA Database.
January 2006
When this report was released in January 2006 it led the
national news for the day. It reveals that 24,000 children, many
of whom will have never committed any crime, have found there
way onto the Police National DNA Database.
This report spurred a national drive to have them removed and
you can find more information at the
http://www.cond.org.uk
website.
