MHCLG · Statutory homelessness in England: detailed local authority tables

Households assessed as owed a homelessness duty

2026 Q1 Provisional

83,850households

Households assessed as owed a homelessness duty were 83,850 households in 2026 Q1.

MHCLG count
2026 Q1
published 13 August 2026
Table A1: initial assessments during the quarter
row “ENGLAND”
column “Assessed as owed a duty Owed a prevention or relief dutyTotal”
cell value 83850

Breakdowns

Households owed a homelessness duty, by duty

What this measures

Households whose council assessed them during the quarter as owed a statutory homelessness duty — either the prevention duty (threatened with homelessness within 56 days) or the relief duty (already homeless) — from the H-CLIC initial assessment tables. A flow: each quarter counts that quarter's assessments.

What this doesn’t measure

Everyone who approached the council (assessments found to be owed no duty are excluded), nor the outcome of the duty — being owed a duty is the start of the process, not a home.

Important caveat

These figures come from H-CLIC, the case-level system every English housing authority reports into, and count only households that approached their council and were dealt with under the homelessness legislation — not rough sleepers, not people who never approached, not informal arrangements. Counts are rounded to the nearest 10 and small counts are suppressed per council, so council figures do not sum exactly to England and a missing council figure means "too small to publish", not zero. Each quarter is published provisional and revised in later releases; some councils occasionally fail to submit and are imputed or omitted, which MHCLG notes in the release. Temporary-accommodation counts are a snapshot of the quarter's last day, and a household placed outside its own council's area is counted by the council that owes it the duty, not the council where it is living.

Revision history

No period of this series has been revised since it was first ingested here. Revisions are recorded automatically when a later release publishes a different figure for the same period.

Source

Publisher: MHCLG
Publication: Statutory homelessness in England: detailed local authority tables
Release: January to March 2026 (provisional), published 13 August 2026
Source file: hclic.ods
File SHA-256: f77eebd761455169626dc04c70f45177b11704999a6094384b59f37fa56d1881
Retrieved: 4 September 2026
Sheet: A1
Table: Table A1: initial assessments during the quarter
Row: ENGLAND
Column: Assessed as owed a duty Owed a prevention or relief dutyTotal
Cell value: 83850
Geography: E92000001
Unit: households
API: /api/metrics/households_owed_homelessness_duty · /series · /vintages

Government periods

Change during each government, from the level inherited to the last complete period before it left office. Describes the period; does not attribute cause.

Full comparison with chart

Release: January to March 2026 (provisional) · publication page
Last updated: 13 August 2026
Next release expected: Not yet announced (estimated from the usual cadence)

Commentary

This section contains interpretation and commentary and is separate from the official statistics above.

This is the front door of the statutory homelessness system: the flow of households each quarter whose council accepted that it owes them help, either because they are threatened with homelessness within 56 days (prevention) or already homeless (relief). It measures acknowledged demand, not total need — people who never approach a council, or approach and are found owed nothing, are outside it.

The flow and the temporary accommodation stock answer different questions and can move in opposite directions: assessments can fall while the stock rises, if households that enter temporary accommodation cannot leave it. Reading the two together — and the prevention/relief split, which shows whether councils are reaching households before or after the crisis — gives a fuller picture than either alone.

Josh · updated 4 September 2026