Homelessness help from Kensington and Chelsea Council

If you are homeless tonight, or worried you are about to lose your home, ask Kensington and Chelsea 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.^[16]

Contact the council's Housing Solutions team on 020 7361 3008, or use its help-with-homelessness page to apply online, by email or in person.^[11] The council does not print a dedicated out-of-hours homelessness number; outside working hours, emergency calls to its social services line, 020 7361 3013, transfer to an out-of-hours service.^[12]

If you are sleeping rough, or worried about someone who is, you can alert local outreach services through StreetLink. Free housing advice from Shelter or Citizens Advice is available at any point, and you can always approach the council yourself directly.

The place to start is the council's Housing Solutions team, which handles homelessness applications. Its duties come from Part 7 of the Housing Act 1996 and are the same in every English council — the general homelessness guide explains each one in detail. In short:

• If you are eligible and likely to become homeless within 56 days, the council owes you the prevention duty — reasonable steps to help you keep your home, or find another, before you lose it.^[16]
• If you are already homeless and eligible, it owes you the relief duty — reasonable steps to help you secure somewhere to live, working with you for up to 56 days.^[16]
• Either way, it must assess your circumstances and agree a personalised housing plan with you, recording the steps you and the council will each take.^[16]
• If you are eligible, in priority need and did not become homeless intentionally, the main housing duty can follow once the relief duty ends — the council must then secure accommodation for your household until that duty ends in one of the ways the law allows.^[16]

These Part 7 duties sit with the council as the local housing authority, whoever your landlord is — so a housing association or private tenant facing homelessness applies to the council, not to their landlord.

If the council has reason to believe you may be homeless, eligible and in priority need, it must secure interim accommodation for you while it looks into your case — this duty arises before any decision on your application.^[16]

Whatever the council provides must be suitable for your whole household. For a household that includes a pregnant woman or dependent children, bed and breakfast accommodation can be used only where nothing else is available, and then for no more than 6 weeks.^[16] The council must also secure accommodation in its own district so far as reasonably practicable, and weigh how a placement's location would affect your work, your caring responsibilities, your children's schooling and any support you rely on.^[16]

Kensington and Chelsea has said it relies on hotels, B&Bs and private-landlord properties for temporary accommodation — options it has described as sometimes unsuitable — and has agreed a plan to buy homes to reduce that reliance.^[14] Temporary accommodation is not usually free; you are normally charged rent for it, and Housing Benefit or Universal Credit may help if you qualify.

As dated national context, official statistics recorded 130,890 households in temporary accommodation across England at the end of March 2025.^[15] If you think accommodation offered to you under a duty is unsuitable for your household, you can normally ask for a review — though emergency accommodation provided while the council is still investigating is challenged differently.^[16]

A homelessness decision you disagree with is not the end of the road. Most of the council's key decisions — whether you are homeless or eligible, whether you have a priority need or became homeless intentionally, a decision that ends a duty, and whether accommodation offered to you is suitable — carry a statutory right to have the council review them, under section 202 of the Housing Act 1996.^[16]

The deadline is tight: you have 21 days from being notified of a decision to ask for a review, unless the council agrees in writing to a longer period. If the review still goes against you — or the council does not tell you the outcome in time — a further challenge lies to the county court on a point of law under section 204, again within 21 days.^[16] Because those windows are short, get advice as soon as a decision arrives.

Help with a review or appeal can be free. Homelessness is in scope for civil legal aid, so a legal aid solicitor can advise and represent you if you qualify — find one through the government's Find a Legal Aid Adviser service — and Shelter and Citizens Advice give free housing advice at any stage.^[27]

A review or appeal is the route for the decision itself. If instead your complaint is about how the council handled your case — delays, lost paperwork, poor communication — raise it through the council's complaints procedure and then the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, which examines maladministration but is not a substitute for a section 202 review or a section 204 appeal.^[24]