This is how many people are sleeping rough on the streets of Yorkshire

There were 242 people sleeping rough in Yorkshire on one night in October when local authorities counted - however, charities said there were likely to be many more.

This is in spite of £30m in funding given to the 83 local authorities with the highest rough sleeper numbers for use in 2018/19. Leeds, which has the biggest rough sleeping problem in Yorkshire, received £352,000, which was used to create a new on-street team which approached homeless people individually and coordinated services for them.

Announcing £236m of new funding aiming to improve the rates of homelessness across England, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the crisis was “totally unacceptable”.

While overall the situation has not improved in Yorkshire, the fact that the figures remained the same represented a drastic change, as rough sleeping rose by a fifth in the region two years in a row and has almost doubled since 2014.

Across the UK, rough sleeping fell 9 per cent, but was still 141 per cent higher than in 2010.

"The number of people sleeping rough in our country is way too high. It is true that they have been coming down in the last year or so, but we want to drive that forward now.

"We want to make a big, big dent in those numbers."

Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter, said rough sleeping was “only the tip of the iceberg.”

She added: “You can’t put a plaster on a gaping wound. Serious investment in social housing is what’s needed. The upcoming budget is the perfect opportunity to champion a new generation of social homes and increase housing benefit, so it covers the basic cost of private rents.”