Tens of thousands approaching UK councils for help last year got no meaningful support

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

More than half of young people facing homelessness who approached their local council for help last year received no meaningful support, potentially putting them at risk of sleeping rough, violence or abuse, according to a report.

More than 100,000 16- to 24-year-olds in the UK turned to their local authority for assistance in 2017-18 because they had either nowhere to live or because they were under threat of homelessness, research by Centrepoint found.

This is likely to be a “significant underestimate” of the scale of youth homelessness, the charity says, as it does not include young people who turned to charities for help, or who ended up sofa-surfing with friends, for example.

Although the 52% of homeless young people who received no help last year should now receive support under the Homelessness Reduction Act (HRA) introduced in April, Centrepoint said councils were not properly funded to meet their new duties.

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Just 13% of young people who presented to councils as homeless were deemed eligible to be housed, while 35% received alternative support, ranging from mediation aimed at moving them back into the family home, to help with a rent deposit.

Being thrown out of the family home after a row was the biggest cause of youth homelessness (37%), followed by being forced to move out of shared accommodation or a friend’s home (15%), and the ending of a tenancy by a private landlord (12%).

Centrepoint says its research is an attempt to capture the real scale of housing need among young people as official figures currently record only the number formally accepted as homeless and offered a home – 13,000 in 2017-18.

The research was based on freedom of information request responses from 90% of English councils, together with information centrally collected by the Scottish and Welsh governments and the Northern Ireland executive.

The estimated 103,000 young people seeking official help for homelessness in 2017-18 compares with 86,000 the previous year, although Centrepoint emphasises that this reflects better data rather than clear evidence of an increase in need.

Where individual council data could be compared over two years, the study found growing youth homelessness in rural areas of England, with big increases recorded in Wealden in East Sussex, west Dorset and Melton in Leicestershire.

By contrast, estimated levels of youth homelessness fell slightly in urban areas, with local authorities citing targeted prevention work with charities and other youth organisations as a reason for the decrease.

North Devon had the highest proportion of youth homelessness in England, with 5.5% of young people there presenting as homeless. Other hotspots include East Lindsey in Lincolnshire (5.5%) and Burnley (4.8%). The average for England is 1%.

The north-west of England recorded the highest number of young people presenting to the local council for help, with 12,300, followed by London with 12,200. Local authorities in the north-east had fewest approaches – 5,200.

Although councils have been given £70m over three years by the government to fund their new duties under the HRA, Centrepoint says that based on the government’s own costings, this would be insufficient to cope with anticipated demand.

Centrepoint’s chief executive, Seyi Obakin, said: “The government has been increasingly vocal on the issue of homelessness but without extra funding for councils to meet their new obligations they are risking setting councils up to fail.”

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said: “We are investing more than £1.2bn to tackle all forms of homelessness, including amongst young people. Our new Homelessness Reduction Act is already making a difference and requires councils to intervene sooner and help those at risk of being left with nowhere to go.”

• This article was amended on 12 November 2018. An earlier version said Centrepoint estimated that 83,000 young people sought official help for homelessness in 2016-17. The estimate was 86,000.