Homelessness help from councils in England

If you are homeless tonight, or you are about to lose your home, ask your council for help today. Councils run housing options services for exactly this, the council cannot turn you away without looking at your situation, and you do not need an appointment, a referral or any paperwork to approach it. If the council has reason to believe you may be homeless, eligible for assistance and in priority need, it must secure emergency accommodation for you straight away — the duty arises before the council has finished its inquiries and before it makes any decision on your application.^[1] Outside office hours, councils run emergency contact routes for people with nowhere safe to sleep. Free, independent help is available at any time from Shelter and Citizens Advice — and nothing on this page needs to be read before you ask for help. If you have nowhere to sleep tonight, contact the council first.

In Wales the first step is the same, but the law is not. Welsh councils' duties come from the Housing (Wales) Act 2014, and free advice comes from Shelter Cymru and Citizens Advice.^[5]

You do not have to be sleeping rough to be homeless in law. You are homeless if you have no accommodation you are entitled to live in — and having a roof is not enough on its own, because accommodation only counts if it would be reasonable for you to continue to occupy it. Someone whose home is not reasonable to stay in, for example because of violence or its condition, is homeless even though they technically have somewhere.^[1] You also count as homeless if you cannot get into your accommodation, or if it is a moveable home such as a boat or caravan with no place you are entitled or allowed to both keep it and live in it.^[1] You are threatened with homelessness — which entitles you to help before you lose your home — if you are likely to become homeless within 56 days, including where a landlord has served a valid possession notice on the only accommodation available to you and the date in the notice falls within 56 days.^[1]

Once the council is satisfied you are homeless or threatened with homelessness and eligible for assistance, it must assess your case: what caused your situation, what accommodation your household needs, and what support you would need to keep a home. It must then try to agree with you the steps you will take and the steps it will take, record them in writing — this written record is your personalised housing plan — and keep the assessment and plan under review.^[1] If you are threatened with homelessness, the council owes you the prevention duty: reasonable steps to help you keep your current home — or, if you cannot, to help you secure suitable accommodation before you become homeless — whatever your priority-need status and however your situation arose. The duty ends only when the council gives written notice on a legal ground — for example, that you now have suitable accommodation with a reasonable prospect of being available for at least 6 months.^[1] If you are already homeless, the council owes you the relief duty: reasonable steps to help you secure suitable accommodation that will be available for at least 6 months. For applicants in priority need who did not become homeless intentionally, the relief duty ends after 56 days, and the council must then decide whether it owes the main housing duty.^[1]

Emergency accommodation does not wait for a decision: if the council has reason to believe you may be homeless, eligible for assistance and in priority need, it must secure interim (emergency) accommodation for you — the threshold is deliberately low, and the duty arises before the council completes its inquiries.^[1] Priority need includes: pregnant women; people with dependent children; people who are vulnerable because of old age, mental illness, disability or another special reason; people made homeless by an emergency such as fire or flood; and — automatically, with no vulnerability test — people who are homeless as a result of domestic abuse. Further categories include 16 and 17 year olds, certain care leavers, and people who are vulnerable after service in the armed forces, time in prison, or leaving accommodation because of violence or threats of violence.^[1] Longer term, if you are eligible, in priority need and did not become homeless intentionally, and the relief duty has ended, the council owes the main housing duty: it must secure accommodation for your household until the duty ends in one of the ways the law sets out — such as your accepting an offer of social housing or a private rented sector offer arranged by the council.^[1] If the council decides you became homeless intentionally but you are in priority need, it owes a more limited duty: accommodation for long enough to give you a reasonable opportunity to find your own, plus advice and assistance while you look.^[1]

Any accommodation the council secures under its homelessness duties must be suitable, and suitability is judged for your whole household, not just for you.^[1] For families there is a specific limit: if your household includes dependent children or someone who is pregnant, bed and breakfast accommodation is not to be regarded as suitable — the council may use it only if no alternative accommodation is available, and even then for no more than 6 weeks in total.^[1] The council must also secure accommodation within its own district so far as reasonably practicable: a placement in another area is lawful only where accommodation in the district is not reasonably practicable, and the placing council must notify the receiving council.

When judging suitability the council must take the location into account:

• disruption to your work, your caring responsibilities and your children's education
• how close you would be to medical facilities and other support essential to your well-being
• local services, amenities and transport
• for a placement outside the district, how far away it is^[1]

Most of the important decisions a council makes on a homelessness application carry a legal right of review under section 202 of the Housing Act 1996 — including decisions about your eligibility, what duty you are owed, the steps the council is to take to help you under the prevention or relief duty (the council's side of your personalised housing plan), a referral of your case to another council, and the suitability of accommodation offered to you. You must request the review within 21 days of being notified of the decision, although the council can allow longer in writing.^[1] So do not sit on a decision letter: ask for the review straight away, and get help with it — free housing advice is available from Shelter and Citizens Advice, and a legal aid solicitor can take the review on for you. If the review still goes against you, or you are not told the outcome within the prescribed time, you can appeal to the county court on a point of law within 21 days of the review decision; the court can only allow a late appeal where there is a good reason for the delay.^[1] One caution: there is no statutory right of review of the suitability of interim (emergency) accommodation — challenges to that are made by judicial review, where help from a legal aid solicitor matters even more.^[1] In Wales both routes exist under different sections: a review under section 85 of the Housing (Wales) Act 2014, and an appeal to the county court on a point of law under section 88, on the same time limits.^[5]

If your complaint is about how the council handled your case — delays, lost paperwork, poor communication — rather than the decision itself, use the council's own complaints procedure first, and then the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, which investigates complaints about councils' homelessness functions. The Housing Ombudsman is a different service: its remit covers complaints about councils and housing associations acting as social landlords, not homelessness decisions. And the ombudsman route is not a substitute for a section 202 review or a section 204 appeal — where you have a right of review or appeal, the ombudsman does not normally investigate instead.^[19] That ombudsman is England's: it cannot investigate a Welsh council, so a complaint about a council in Wales goes to the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales instead.^[5] Free help is available throughout. Homelessness is within the scope of civil legal aid, so advice and representation on your application, a review or a county court appeal can be free if you qualify under the means and merits tests — and legal aid separately covers possession and eviction proceedings if you are facing losing your home through the courts. You can find a legal aid solicitor by category and postcode using the official Find a Legal Aid Adviser service, and free housing advice is available from Shelter, Citizens Advice and local law centres throughout.^[8]