Homelessness is now five times worse in the UK than the government admits, according to figures that reveal more than 28,000 people were recorded sleeping rough in a year.

Campaigners have accused ministers of “seriously misleading” the public by providing an “unreliable undercount” of people sleeping on the streets.

The latest official rough sleeping figures, which the government calculates based on a one-night snapshot, show 4,677 people were sleeping on the streets in England in 2018 – down 2 per cent on the year before but 165 per cent up on 2010.

But council responses to a freedom of information (FoI) request show nearly 25,000 people were recorded sleeping rough at least once in England during the latest year on record, according to the BBC.

Shadow housing minister John Healey said the data showed the government’s statistics were “seriously misleading” and demanded an investigation into the "flaws" in the government data.

The Stats: Homelessness in the UK Show all 10 1 /10 The Stats: Homelessness in the UK The Stats: Homelessness in the UK Sleeping rough up 165% from 2010 The total number of people counted or estimated to be sleeping rough on a single night in autumn 2018 was 4,677, up 2,909 people or 165% from the 2010 total of 1,768 Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK London rough sleepers up 13% The number of people sleeping rough increased by 146 or 13% in London since 2017 AFP/Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK London accounted for 27% of people sleeping rough in England London accounted for 27% of the total number of people sleeping rough in England. This is up from 24% of the England total in 2017 Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK 64% of rough sleeps UK nationals 64% were UK nationals, compared to 71% in 2017 AFP/Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK 14% of rough sleepers are women 14% of the people recorded sleeping rough were women, the same as in 2017 Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK 6% were aged 25 years or under, compared to 8% in 2017 AFP/Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK Thousands of families staying in temporary housing Almost 79,000 families were staying in temporary housing in the last three months of 2017 because they didn't have a permanent home, compared with 48,010 in the same period eight years before Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK Reduction in families living in temporary housing before Coalition government There had been a significant reduction in families living in such conditions before the Coalition government came into power, with the number having fallen by 52 per cent between 2004 and 2010 under the Labour government AFP/Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK Families staying in temporary has risen since But the figure has crept up in each of the past seven years, from 69,140 in the last quarter of 2015, to 75,740 in the same period in 2016 and 78,930 at the end of last year Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK Nearly 58,000 families accepted as homeless (2018) Nearly 58,000 families have been accepted as homeless by their local council in the past year (as of March 2018), equating to an increase of 8 per cent over the last five years Getty

“These figures expose the shameful scale of rough sleeping on our country’s streets. The Conservatives can’t begin to fix the problem when they won’t admit the scale of it,” he said

“Ministers should replace these discredited statistics and adopt Labour’s plan to end rough sleeping for good.”

In a letter to the UK’s statistics chief Sir David Norgrove, Mr Healey said: "The government’s rough sleeping statistics are the sole statistics produced by government on rough sleeping so they are naturally and inevitably assumed by the public to be an accurate portrayal of the scale of rough sleeping. This is clearly not the case.

"I would be grateful if you would investigate the flaws in these figures and how the government’s statistics could be improved so they better capture the level of rough sleeping in our country.

It comes after Sir David said last year that an “apparent methodological change” in the way local authorities recorded rough sleeping meant the statistics “should not be used to draw firm conclusions” or to support claims about the success of the government’s emergency funding scheme to tackle the issue.

During Prime Ministers Questions last month, Boris Johnson cited the government figures suggesting there had been a 2 per cent drop in rough sleeping – describing it as a "floating glimmer of good news".

A government spokesman said: “We're committed to eliminating rough sleeping by the end of the parliament and our efforts have already led to the first nationwide fall in a decade.