Councils face £300m funding gap to help young homeless - charity

Councils in England have a £300m funding gap to help young homeless people, with one council in London short of £32m, a charity has said.

Research by Centrepoint estimates young people are being turned away by councils which "do not have the means" to fulfil their legal duties.

The government said it wanted to ensure young people get support.

But councils in Liverpool, Hammersmith and Fulham, Ealing, Cornwall and Bexley face £10m shortfalls, the charity said.

The research also estimated Newham Council was short of £32m.

Last year, the charity found more than a third of the 119,300 young people in England who approached councils for homelessness support between April 2022 and March 2023 were not assessed.

Analysis by WPI Economics estimated local authorities would need 15% more funding, about £332m, from central government to meet the needs of all of the people aged 16 to 24 approaching them for homelessness support.

Alicia Walker, head of policy, research and campaigns at Centrepoint, said: "Councils have a legal duty to assess anyone who presents as homeless, but we are deeply concerned that they do not have the means to carry out these duties.

"It's not good enough that so many young people are not getting the chance of that assessment, let alone accessing support."

Darren Rodwell, housing spokesperson for the Local Government Association, said: "Councils have consistently raised significant concerns about the impact rising cost of living, multiple asylum and resettlement programmes, and an insufficient supply of affordable housing, are having on driving increases in homelessness."

He said discrepancies between the cost of temporary accommodation and subsidies for it meant local authorities had increased their use of the Homelessness Prevention Grant and their General Fund to pay for it and urged the government to address the subsidy gap.

A spokesperson for the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, said: "We recognise that young people experiencing homelessness face particular challenges, and we want to ensure that they get the support they need."

A further £1.2bn over three years was being spent to increase council funding to prevent homelessness and dedicated youth advisor roles had been created, the spokesperson added.

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