Helping you keep your home

If you are threatened with homelessness or will become homeless in 56 days and you are eligible for assistance. We will offer you information and advice on preventing your homelessness. We will also help you to develop a personal housing plan.

A homeless assessment will be completed to determine the duties we owe to you when applying for assistance.

This process will generally begin by a face-to-face initial interview, although if this is not possible we can conduct the interview over the telephone or through a partner agency.

If following enquiries, we are satisfied that you are not homeless in 56 days, we will notify you of that decision in writing and no further assistance will be offered to you at that time other than advice and information. If you do not agree with this decision, you have the right to request a review of that decision within 21 days.

If however, following enquiries, we are satisfied that you are homeless or threatened with homelessness in 56 days, as well as offering you advice and information, we will help you to create a personal housing plan.

Personal housing plan

A personal housing plan is a written agreement detailing how we and you will work together to prevent or relieve your homelessness.

The aim of the plan is to try to make sure that you have somewhere suitable to live for at least the next 6 months.

It sets out the steps that you and the council must take to stop you from becoming homeless or to enable you to find housing if you have already lost your home.

We will ask you to agree any steps included in the plan. Sometimes, an applicant may not agree with all the steps specified in their plan. Where this happens, we will decide which steps must be taken and will record the reasons you disagreed.

If we think that you have deliberately and unreasonably refused to take a step that we stated you must take, we will inform you of this and give you a reasonable amount of time to do what has been asked of you. If after this warning you still do not take the steps required of you and we believe that you have deliberately and unreasonably refused to cooperate, we will serve you with a notice ending our prevention duty towards you.

If this happens, we will not offer you any further assistance to prevent your homelessness for the remainder of the 56 days. You can challenge this decision.

The plan will be kept under review until our duty comes to an end.

About your personal housing plan

The actions included in the plan will depend on your own personal circumstances, however typical inclusions might be:

• For us to speak to your landlord to agree a repayment plan on your behalf should you be in arrears of rent
• For us to ask your landlord to give you more notice before having to vacate your home, so that you have more time to find alternative suitable accommodation
• You might be asked to look for accommodation yourself within the private rented sector
• You might be asked to attend mediation to resolve a family issue
• If you are at risk of violence or abuse, we might help you with measures that would enable you to stay in your current accommodation
• You might be advised to seek debt counselling and or money advice
• You might be advised to claim additional benefits or perhaps look for work