THE Government has been urged to tackle the root causes of homelessness as new figures show the number of people sleeping rough in Blackburn with Darwen jumped 650 per cent last year.

Each local authority across the country carries out an annual count of rough sleepers on a specified night.

In 2017, two people were found sleeping rough in Blackburn with Darwen during the count but that number rose to 15 last year.

In Burnley, the number of rough sleepers remained flat on 2017 at one, while Hyndburn rose from six to seven.

Officials in Pendle, Ribble Valley and Rossendale have not found any rough sleepers during the count for the last two years.

In total, some 4,667 people were estimated to be sleeping rough across England last autumn, according to data from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

This was a rise of 2,909 since comparable records began in 2010, but marked the first decrease of the decade, with a drop of two per cent since 2017.

The North and Midlands saw a 16.8 per cent increase to 1,518 rough sleepers last year, whereas improvements were seen across the South, where some 3,159 people were estimated to be sleeping rough, an 8.5 per cent fall from 2017.

Charities rapped the rise since the turn of the decade, with Centrepoint head of public affairs Paul Noblet warning there were “many more hidden homeless people” in unsafe accommodation.

“Today’s snapshot statistics may show a slight decrease in the number of people rough-sleeping, but these figures are only the tip of a much larger iceberg as they only attempt to count the number of people sleeping rough on one night of the year,” he said.

Crisis chief executive Jon Sparkes said the scale of rough sleeping was a “damning reflection on our society”, while Shelter’s Polly Neate urged the Government to tackle “the root causes of homelessness”.

Communities Secretary James Brokenshire said: “The number of vulnerable people sleeping on our streets has now fallen for the first time in eight years.

“But while these figures are undoubtedly a step in the right direction, I do not underestimate the task ahead in achieving our ambition of eliminating rough sleeping altogether by 2027.”

Shadow Housing Secretary John Healey said the “desperately disappointing” figures underestimated the reality of the homelessness situation.

“The national figures obscure the fact that in a large number of areas, particularly in the North of England, the number of rough sleepers is still going up,” the Labour MP added.

“Poorer areas have been hit hardest by Tory cuts, which means they’re less able to cope with the homelessness crisis on our streets.”

On Monday, a report by think-tank Centre For Cities said northern English cities had been disproportionately affected by austerity, with their spending cut on average by 20% compared with 9% for southern cities.

The MHCLG acknowledged its rough sleeping data is “subject to some uncertainty” and warned that some rough sleepers “may be missed” because of practical difficulties.

These include people bedding down at varying times across large areas and the availability of spaces in night shelters and the weather.