Homelessness help from Westminster City Council

If you are homeless, or worried you are about to lose your home, ask Westminster 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.^[13]

Contact the council's Housing Solutions Service on 020 7641 1000 during weekday office hours, or register online through the council's get-help-with-homelessness page; the council says a member of the team will then contact you and arrange an appointment.^[8] If the offices are closed and you have nowhere to sleep tonight, call the council's out-of-hours line, 020 7286 7412, for emergency housing help.^[9]

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.

Westminster acts as the local housing authority here, and its duties under Part 7 of the Housing Act 1996 are the same ones every English council owes — the general homelessness guide sets each out in full. The core duties are:

• Prevention. If you are eligible and likely to lose your home within 56 days, the council must take reasonable steps to help you keep it, or find somewhere else, before you become homeless.^[13]
• Relief. If you are already homeless and eligible, it must take reasonable steps over up to 56 days to help you secure somewhere to live.^[13]
• Assessment and a plan. Either way, the council must look into your circumstances and agree a personalised housing plan with you, setting down what you and it will each do.^[13]
• The main housing duty. If you are eligible, in priority need and did not make yourself homeless deliberately, the council must secure accommodation for your household once the relief duty ends, until that duty ends in one of the ways the law sets out.^[13]

Because these are the housing authority's duties, they apply whoever your landlord is — a housing association or private tenant facing homelessness applies to Westminster just the same.

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.^[13]

Whatever is provided must be suitable for your whole household. For households that include 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.^[13]

Westminster says demand for temporary accommodation in the borough is very high: emergency placements are usually in a hotel or hostel, longer-term temporary accommodation is self-contained, and half of its temporary accommodation is now outside the borough because it cannot find affordable properties in Westminster — in some cases outside Greater London. The council says around 2,600 homeless applicants are living in its temporary accommodation.^[10]

The law still applies to every placement: the council must secure accommodation in its own district so far as reasonably practicable, and must weigh the location's effect on your work, caring responsibilities, children's education and the support you rely on.^[13] If you think accommodation offered 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.^[13] As dated national context, official statistics recorded 130,890 households in temporary accommodation across England at the end of March 2025.^[11]

Most of the decisions that matter carry a right to a review under section 202 of the Housing Act 1996 — whether you are homeless or eligible, whether you are in priority need or became homeless intentionally, a decision to end a duty, or the suitability of somewhere you have been offered.^[13]

The time limit is short: ask for the review within 21 days of being told the decision, unless the council agrees a longer period in writing. If the review does not go your way — or the council misses the deadline to tell you the outcome — you can take a point of law to the county court under section 204, again within 21 days.^[13] The deadlines are strict, so get advice fast.

Help with a review or appeal can be free. Homelessness is within the scope of 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]

If your problem is with how the council handled your case — delay, lost documents, no reply — rather than the decision itself, raise it through the council's complaints procedure and then the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman. That is a route for administrative failings, not a substitute for a section 202 review or a section 204 appeal.^[24]