Jobcentre staff will be sent out on to the streets in teams to advise homeless people and rough sleepers on how to find housing and work and access benefits, the government has announced.

A £3m fund is being set up to pay for the outreach teams in the 2020-21 financial year. It will also be used to bolster projects that jobcentres are already involved in along with other organisations, such as the Salvation Army in Cardiff, Crisis in Edinburgh and Teardrops in St Helens, Merseyside, to support homeless people.

Figures released by the government in December showed the number of households considered newly homeless or at risk of becoming so increased by 11.4% across England over the previous 12 months.

The number of households living in temporary accommodation in England also reached a 10-year high. A total of 84,740 households were in bed and breakfasts, hostels and other temporary accommodation at the end of March 2019, including 126,020 children. This compared with a low in 2010, after 13 years of Labour government, when the total stood at 48,010.

Figures from the homelessness charity Shelter show that at least 320,000 people are homeless and almost 5,000 are sleeping rough.

Ministers say the new initiative aims to allow staff to engage actively with homeless people and rough sleepers, rather than focusing only on those who have already begun to seek help.

Will Quince, the minister for welfare delivery, said: “We are determined to help anyone experiencing homelessness, and if this means getting staff out of the jobcentre to speak to people on the street directly then we will do that.

“There’s a huge amount of support available to help people who are homeless, but they often don’t know about the support they can access. So we’re going out and taking the help to them through outreach programmes and working more closely with homelessness charities.”