Homelessness help from Bristol City Council

If you are homeless today, or worried you are about to lose your home, ask Bristol City Council for help straight away — it cannot turn you away without looking at your case. You do not have to wait until you are on the street: for anyone eligible, the council's duties begin once you are likely to become homeless within 56 days.^[9]

The council's homelessness help is run by its Homelessness Prevention Team, based at the Citizen Service Point at 100 Temple Street in the city centre. In the daytime you can call a housing adviser on 0117 352 6800, start online through the council's housing advice service, or go to the Citizen Service Point in person.^[6]

If you have nowhere safe to stay tonight and it is outside office hours or the weekend, call the council's Emergency Duty Team on 01454 615 165.^[6]

If you are sleeping rough in Bristol, or worried about someone who is, the council funds St Mungo's Rough Sleeper Service, which can help — and you can alert outreach services nationally through StreetLink. Free housing advice from Shelter or Citizens Advice is available at any point, and you can approach the council yourself directly.

Every council in England owes the same homelessness duties, set out in Part 7 of the Housing Act 1996 and explained in full on the general homelessness guide. Which one applies to you turns on your circumstances.

For most people it starts with one of two duties. If you are eligible and still housed but likely to lose your home within 56 days, Bristol owes you the prevention duty — practical help to keep the home you have, or to line up another before you have to leave.^[9] Once you are actually homeless, that becomes the relief duty — help to secure somewhere to live for at least six months.^[9] Before either, the council has to look into your situation and draw up a personalised housing plan with you, listing what it will do and what you need to do.^[9]

Where a household is eligible, in priority need and did not deliberately cause its own homelessness, a further duty follows when relief ends: the main housing duty, under which the council must keep accommodation available until the duty is brought to an end in one of the ways the Act allows.^[9]

Priority need is what decides whether the council must actually house you. It covers households with children or a pregnant member, people left homeless by a fire, flood or similar emergency, and those who are vulnerable through age, disability or ill health; anyone made homeless by domestic abuse qualifies automatically, with no vulnerability test.^[9]

As soon as Bristol has reason to think you might be homeless, eligible and in priority need, it must arrange interim accommodation while it looks into your case — that duty bites before any decision is made on your application.^[9]

Whatever you are given has to be suitable for everyone in your household. Bed and breakfast is a last resort for families: where a household includes children or a pregnant woman it can be used only if nothing else is available, and then for no longer than six weeks.^[9]

Temporary accommodation is under pressure everywhere: official statistics recorded 135,580 households in temporary accommodation across England on 31 March 2026, the highest on record.^[8] What that means locally is that a placement is not always close to where you live now.

The law still sets limits wherever you end up. So far as it reasonably can, the council must house you in its own area; and when it weighs whether a place is suitable, it has to take account of the effect on your job, your caring duties, your children's schooling and your access to medical care and support.^[9] If you think what you are offered is not suitable for your household, you can usually ask for a review.^[9]

If a decision goes against you, you often do not have to accept it. Under section 202 of the Housing Act 1996 you can ask Bristol to review most of its key decisions — that you are not homeless, not eligible or not in priority need, that you became homeless intentionally, that a duty has come to an end, or that the accommodation you have been offered is suitable.^[9] The request has to reach the council within 21 days of the decision, unless it agrees in writing to a longer period. If the review still goes against you, or the council does not decide it in time, you can appeal to the county court on a point of law — again within 21 days.^[9]

The deadlines are short, so keep every letter and move quickly. You should not have to do this on your own: reviews and appeals fall within civil legal aid, so a legal aid solicitor can represent you free of charge if you qualify — the government's Find a Legal Aid Adviser service lists local ones.^[23] Shelter, Citizens Advice and law centres give free housing advice as well.

Complaining is a separate track from a review. If the problem is the way the council handled things — delays, lost documents, being passed from one officer to another — raise it through Bristol's complaints procedure and then the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, which covers councils' homelessness work. The Housing Ombudsman deals with complaints about social landlords, not homelessness decisions, and neither ombudsman takes the place of a section 202 review or a section 204 appeal.^[20]