Information
These published reports present information from the multi-agency database Combined Homelessness and Information Network (CHAIN), about people seen rough sleeping by outreach teams in London. CHAIN, which is commissioned and funded by the Greater London Authority (GLA) and managed by Homeless Link, represents one of the UK’s most detailed and comprehensive sources of information about rough sleeping.
Services that record information on CHAIN include outreach teams, assessment centres, accommodation projects, day centres and other specialist projects. The system allows users to share information about work done with people sleeping rough and about their needs, ensuring that they receive the most appropriate support and that efforts are not duplicated.
In these reports, people are counted as having been seen rough sleeping if they have been encountered by a commissioned outreach worker bedded down on the street, or in other open spaces or locations not designed for habitation, such as doorways, stairwells, parks or derelict buildings. The report does not include people from “hidden homeless” groups such as those “sofa surfing” or living in squats, unless they have also been seen bedded down in one of the settings outlined above.
Separate reports are produced for London as a whole and for individual boroughs, and these are published each quarter. There are also annual reports that contain aggregated information for each full year.
Interactive Visualisation Tool
Quarterly Data Tool
Annual Data Tool
A suite of online interactive charts and maps based on CHAIN data is available by clicking the above links. The data available via these tools mirrors that presented in the published PDF documents, with the addition of filters and other enhancements to allow users to interrogate the data. The Quarterly Data Tool shows data from the last eight quarters, and the Annual Data Tool shows data from the last five years.
Organisations Using CHAIN
A list of the organisations which have signed the CHAIN Data Protection Agreement and are able to access the live CHAIN system is also available to download.
PDF Reports & Data tables
As of January 2024, published CHAIN PDF reports are accompanied by an OpenDocument Spreadsheet file providing the underlying data in an accessible aggregated tabular format. The file includes data at local authority level, and for London overall, including comparative data for previous periods. There is also an accompanying explanatory notes document, which provides important contextual information about the data.
Please click the links below to download a zip file containing the PDF reports and OpenDocument Spreadsheet for the corresponding timeframe.
Publication Schedule
Reports are published 1 month after the end of each quarter and one quarter after the end of each year. The linked document below provides details of forthcoming publications
Quarterly and Annual Report Schedule 2026/27
2026/27
2025/26
2024/25
2023/24
2022/23
2021/22
2020/21
2019/20
2018/19
2017/18
2016/17
2015/16
2014/15
Pre-2014/15
- For earlier reports please see the end of this page.
This dataset is one of the Greater London Authority's measures of Economic Fairness. Click here to find out more.
