CHAIN reports provide quarterly and annual counts of people seen rough sleeping by outreach teams across London. The data is commissioned by the Greater London Authority and managed by Homeless Link, representing one of the UK's most detailed sources on this topic. Reports exclude 'hidden homeless' groups unless they are encountered bedded down in open spaces.
Use Cases
- Analyze quarterly trends in rough sleeping based on the time-series reports.
- Compare homelessness prevalence across different London boroughs based on local authority-level data.
- Evaluate the impact of outreach and support services based on the multi-agency data sharing described.
- Model seasonal patterns in rough sleeping based on the quarterly publication schedule.
Strengths
- Data is updated quarterly and annually, providing regular time-series insights.
- Covers London as a whole and individual boroughs, allowing for geographic analysis.
- Underlying data is available in an aggregated tabular format (OpenDocument Spreadsheet) as of January 2024.
Limitations
- Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
- Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
- Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to uk_data, focusing solely on London.
Provenance
- Source
- Greater London Authority (GLA) and Homeless Link.
- Collection Method
- Collected by commissioned outreach teams and recorded in the multi-agency Combined Homelessness and Information Network (CHAIN) database.
- Time Range
- Data is available for the last eight quarters and last five years via the interactive tools.
- Freshness
- Reports are published 1 month after each quarter and one quarter after each year. Last platform update was 2026-05-27.
- Geography
- London, United Kingdom, including borough-level breakdowns.