Homelessness help from Kingston Council

If you are homeless, or worried you are about to lose your home, contact Kingston Council today — 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 can begin once you are threatened with homelessness within 56 days.^[18] The council says it will try to stop you losing your home in that window.^[12]

The main way in is the council's online housing-advice form on kingston.gov.uk, which opens a housing advice account where you can upload documents, track progress and see your personal housing plan; the council says it aims to respond to applications within 10 working days.^[12] For urgent help you can call the council's contact centre on 020 8547 5000, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm.^[10] Outside those hours, the council's out-of-hours emergency line — 020 8547 5800 — takes emergencies in the evenings and at weekends; it is the council-wide emergency number, not a dedicated homelessness line.^[13]

If you are sleeping rough, or worried about someone who is, StreetLink alerts local outreach services. Free, independent housing advice is available at any point from Shelter and Citizens Advice, and locally from Kingston Churches Action on Homelessness (KCAH), whose drop-in the council itself signposts.^[11] You can approach the council yourself — no referral is needed.

The council's duties come from Part 7 of the Housing Act 1996 and are the same in every English council — the general homelessness guide explains each in detail. In short:

• If you are eligible and threatened with homelessness within 56 days, Kingston owes you the prevention duty — reasonable steps to help you keep your home or find another before you lose it.^[18]
• If you are already homeless and eligible, it owes you the relief duty — reasonable steps to help you secure accommodation.^[18]
• In both cases it must assess your circumstances and agree a plan with you — Kingston calls this your personal housing plan, and you can view it, and the steps you and the council have each agreed, in your online housing advice account.^[12][18]
• 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 the duty ends in one of the ways the law allows.^[18]

The council is plain that longer-term housing is not quick: it says securing settled accommodation can take months or years — worth knowing when you and your adviser agree the steps in your plan.^[15]

If Kingston 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 — the duty arises before any decision on your application.^[18]

Kingston describes temporary accommodation as a short-term place to stay, such as a hostel or bed and breakfast, provided until it has helped you secure suitable longer-term housing.^[15] Whatever is provided must be suitable for your whole household. For households with dependent children or a pregnant member, bed and breakfast can be used only where nothing else is available — and then for no more than 6 weeks in total.^[18]

Placements are not always in the borough. The council says it may need to place people outside Kingston where there is no suitable housing available, and that it will then try to find somewhere as close as possible; it says you may get priority to stay in Kingston for reasons such as serious health conditions, a child's special educational needs, an essential care package, or work in the borough.^[15] Official statistics recorded 890 households in temporary accommodation secured by Kingston at 31 December 2025 — 601 of them households with children — and 361 Kingston households placed in another local authority area at the same date.^[17]

Every placement is still bound by law: so far as reasonably practicable the council must house you within Kingston, and in judging suitability it must take account of disruption to your work, caring responsibilities and children's schooling, and your access to medical care and support.^[18] If you think accommodation offered under a duty is unsuitable for your household, you can normally request a review.^[18]

If you disagree with an important homelessness decision, you have a legal right to ask Kingston for a review under section 202 of the Housing Act 1996.^[18] That covers whether you are eligible, which duty the council owes you, a decision ending a duty, and whether accommodation offered to you is suitable.^[18] The council says it will give you its decision once its prevention or relief work ends — after 56 or 112 days.^[12] Ask for a review within 21 days of being told the decision, though the council can allow longer in writing.^[18] If the review goes against you, or you hear nothing within the prescribed time, you can appeal to the county court on a point of law under section 204 — again within 21 days.^[18]

Much of the evidence a review needs is already in your housing advice account: the documents you uploaded, your messages with the council, and the steps in your personal housing plan.^[12] You do not have to argue a review alone. Homelessness is within the scope of civil legal aid, so advice and representation from a legal aid solicitor can be free if you qualify — search with the government's Find a Legal Aid Adviser service.^[29] KCAH, which the council itself signposts, offers free local advice, and Shelter and Citizens Advice help at any stage.^[11]

A complaint is the separate route, for how Kingston handled your case — delays, lost paperwork, poor communication — rather than what it decided. The council takes complaints through the form on its feedback-and-complaints pages, or by phone on 020 8547 5000.^[14] It answers in two stages — within 10 working days at stage one and 20 at stage two — and its own pages then point to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, which covers council homelessness functions.^[14][26] Neither a complaint nor the ombudsman route is a substitute for a section 202 review or a section 204 appeal — and the Housing Ombudsman, which covers social landlords, does not handle homelessness decisions.^[26]