Homelessness help from Lambeth Council

If you are homeless now, or worried you are about to lose your home, contact Lambeth Council's Housing Advice Team 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.^[21]

Call the Housing Advice Team on 020 7926 4200, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. A member of the team talks through your situation to work out whether making a homeless application is the right step for you. The council does not publish an online homelessness application form for individuals, so the phone line is the way in.^[15]

Outside office hours, the council's main line, 020 7926 1000, takes urgent housing calls that cannot wait until the service reopens.^[15]

If you are sleeping rough, or worried about someone who is, you can alert Lambeth's rough sleeping outreach service through StreetLink.^[18] Call 999 if someone needs urgent medical help.

Free housing advice from Shelter or Citizens Advice is available at any point, and you can always approach the council yourself directly.

Lambeth's duties come from Part 7 of the Housing Act 1996 and are the same across England — 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.^[21]
• If you are already homeless and eligible, it owes you the relief duty — reasonable steps to help you secure accommodation.^[21]
• In both cases it must assess your circumstances and record what you and the council will each do in a personalised housing plan.^[21]
• 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.^[21]

Whether you are eligible can depend on your immigration and residence status — the general homelessness guide sets out who is eligible.^[21]

If Lambeth 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.^[21]

Whatever is provided must be suitable for your whole household. For households with dependent children or a pregnant member, bed and breakfast accommodation can be used only where nothing else is available, and then for no more than 6 weeks.^[21]

On the local picture, Lambeth is open that temporary accommodation may be outside the borough, or even outside London, and that fewer than one in five people who move into it stay in Lambeth; it says people are often in temporary accommodation for many years. How it chooses a location is set out in its published Housing Placement Policy.^[16]

The law still applies to every placement: the council must secure accommodation in its own district so far as reasonably practicable, and must weigh how a location would affect your work, your caring responsibilities, your children's schooling and the support you rely on.^[21] Lambeth will normally make only one offer of suitable temporary accommodation, so if you think an offer is unsuitable, get advice quickly — you can normally ask for a review rather than simply turning it down.^[16][21]

Section 202 of the Housing Act 1996 gives you the right to have most important homelessness decisions looked at again.^[21] That covers decisions on:

• your eligibility, or whether you count as homeless
• priority need, or a finding that you became homeless intentionally
• the council bringing a duty to an end
• whether accommodation offered to you is suitable (interim accommodation has a different challenge route).^[21]

The clock runs for 21 days from the day you are told the decision, unless the council agrees in writing to give you longer. A review that goes against you — or one you hear nothing about within the time allowed — can then be taken to the county court on a point of law under section 204, again within 21 days.^[21]

For an offer of accommodation or a discharge of the main housing duty under section 193, Lambeth publishes Reviewrequests@lambeth.gov.uk (subject "Review request") and the Temporary Accommodation Team as review routes. For other decisions, follow the review instructions in your decision letter.^[17] Do not let the 21 days slip — the council does not have to consider a late request.

None of this needs to be faced alone. Homelessness cases fall within civil legal aid, so a legal aid solicitor can advise on and run a review or appeal for you at no cost if you are financially eligible; check who qualifies through the government's Find a Legal Aid Adviser tool.^[36] Shelter and Citizens Advice also give free housing advice throughout.

A different kind of complaint — about how your case was handled, rather than what was decided — goes through Lambeth's own complaints process first, then the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman if you are still unhappy. That route cannot substitute for a section 202 review or a section 204 appeal, which have their own strict deadlines.^[33]