Homelessness duties over time

Last updated: January 2026

Next estimated update: November 2026

What’s this indicator?

This indicator looks at the number of households owed support (called a ‘duty’) by their local authority over time, and the type of duty owed.

Local authorities have three main types of duties towards households at risk of homelessness:

1. Prevention duty: Local authorities owe prevention duties to help stop households at risk of homelessness losing their accommodation.
2. Relief duty: If a household is homeless, the local authority owes them a relief duty to provide some sort of accommodation.
3. Main duty: The main homelessness duty to provide accommodation (which until 2018 was the only statutory duty owed to homeless households) comes into effect when the relief duty has failed and accommodation has not been secured.

What does it tell us?

The number of duties owed by local authorities has now increased in three consecutive years. In the last year there have been especially sharp rises in the number of households owed the main duty and the relief duty.

This illustrates the increasing pressure the housing crisis is placing across local authorities in London.

In the longer term, this chart shows the sharp increase between 2017/18 and 2018/19.The significant increase in duties owed by local authorities in 2018/19 onwards reflects the increased statutory responsibilities placed on local authorities by the HRA.

While this represents a significant increase in formal duties owed, prior to the HRA, many local authorities were already engaged in supporting those at risk of homelessness but not owed a statutory duty. As such, it is difficult to assess the overall increase in the activity local authorities are engaged in to tackle homelessness in the longer term.

Note also that these figures relate to duties owed rather than individuals, as the same person can be recorded as being owed a prevention or relief duty, and then a main duty following that.