Homelessness in England

In England, local authorities have duties to homeless people under Part VII of the Housing Act 1996 as amended by the Homelessness Act 2002. There are five hurdles which a homeless person must overcome in order to qualify as statutory homeless. If an applicant only needs the first three of these tests Councils still have a duty to provide intermin accommodation. However an applicant must satisfy all five for a Council to have to give an applicant "reaonable preference" on the social housing register. Even if a person passes these fives tests councils have the ability to use the private rented sector to end their duty to a homeless person.

The five tests are:

The annual number of homeless households in England peaked in 2003-04 at 135,420 before falling to a low of 40,020 in 2009-10. In 2014-15, there were 54,430 homeless households, which was 60 per cent below the 2003-04 peak. However, in December 2016 the housing charity Shelter estimated homelessness in England to amount to more than 250,000 people; Shelter calculated the figure using four sets of official sources: statistics on rough sleepers, statistics on those in temporary accommodation, the number of people housed in hostels and the number of people waiting to be housed by council social services departments.

In England, it had been estimated in 2007 an average of 498 people slept rough each night, with 248 of those in London. But reportedly numbers sleeping rough have soared in recent years and doubled since 2010; figures reported for the 2015 count were 3,569 people rough sleeping in England on a single night, up 102% from 2010.

Given the costs of providing temporary accommodation and the limit amount of social housing in the United Kingdom some Councils have been criticised for attempting to circumvent their duties under the law a process which has been termed "gatekeeping". The term "Non-statutory homelessness" covers people who are considered by the local authority to be not eligible for assistance, not in priority need or "intentionally homeless".

In 2007/2008, the Office of the Deputy for Homelessness Statistics produced a table which showed some of the more immediate reasons for homelessness in England. These were not underlying reasons but before the onset of homelessness. These reasons were given by the minister's report for 2007/2008 as:

The longer term causes of homelessness in England have been examined by a number of research studies. These suggest that both personal factors (e.g. addictions) and structural factors (e.g. poverty) are responsible for homelessness. A number of different pathways into homelessness have been identified. There are additional factors that appear to be causes of homelessness among young people, most notably needing to face the responsibilities of independent living before they are ready for them

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