Guide to homelessness applications

If you have already applied for homeless assistance, please contact your housing options officer.

Complete housing options enquiry form

If you are homeless, or at risk of becoming homeless in the next two months, you will need to complete the housing options enquiry form.

Supplying additional information

Once you have completed the housing options enquiry form you may be asked to provide further information or details, and relevant documents.

You will need to provide a range of correct documents (pdf, 221 KB) before and at your interview.

You may be asked to provide further evidence throughout the assessment period and you should fully engage with us at all stages.

Delays in responding to requests for further information, or failure to upload or provide the correct documents may result in us being unable to assist you.

Interview

Once you have completed a housing options assessment form and have been offered an appointment for an interview with a Housing Options Officer, you should expect to answer questions about your situation and provide evidence of your circumstances.

During the interview we will explain:

• The legal guidance we must follow to assess your application
• The stages of the application process
• The type of assistance you should expect from the Council to help you prevent or relieve homelessness
• The type of housing you should expect if we have a full duty to assist you with housing
• Whether we will consider providing you with temporary accommodation whilst we assess your application

You will need to provide the correct documents (pdf, 221 KB) at your interview - if you do not, we may be unable to help you.

We may also ask you to provide further evidence throughout the assessment period.

At the end of this interview, we will complete a personalised housing plan with you. This will detail the actions required by you and the actions we will take to help you prevent or relieve your homelessness. Your personalised housing plan will be updated as necessary to reflect changes in your circumstances.

Assessment

During the enquiry stage of your application, your caseworker may contact you to review and update your personalised housing plan or ask you to provide additional evidence to support your application. 

Please make sure you tell them about any change in circumstances immediately, as this may lead to delays in assessing your application, affect your assessment or housing options available to you.

Enquiries we make on your application

You and any adult family member will be asked to provide signed consent for our enquiries to be carried out. Depending on your circumstances, your caseworker may contact:

• The Home Office
• Your current and previous employers
• Your current and previous landlords
• Benefit services
• Your children’s schools
• Your GP and medical professionals involved in your care
• Credit Check
• Previous Local Authorities you have a connection with or resided in
• The police and probation services

This list is not final and any other reasonable enquiries for the purposes of assessing your application will be carried out.

Decision 

At each stage of the process, you will be advised of the decisions made on your application which will be based on:

• The information you provided during your interview(s)
• Actions identified in your personal housing plan
• The information you have provided
• The information we have gathered from our enquiries into your case

We will write to let you know about these decisions.

Firstly, we will let you know if your case is being considered under either our prevention or relief duty.

At the end of our prevention and relief duties, if you are still in need of housing, we will send you a S184 decision letter to confirm if we have a full duty to assist you with housing. 

If we have a full duty to assist you, we will let you know that you have been registered on the homeless queue on the housing register to await a final offer of accommodation which may be an offer of social housing or a private rented tenancy.

If we do not have a full duty to assist you, the decision will explain the reasons in detail and provide you with information on how to request a review if you do not agree with how the decision has been reached. You will need to begin to find your own accommodation if you are currently in temporary accommodation. Find out what other housing options may be available to you.