The report outlines the key issues regarding local authority youth homelessness support, as identified in interviews and focus groups with youth homelessness sector staff and young people with lived experience of homelessness, and highlights how these issues are reflected in the proposed chapter.
The Homelessness Code of Guidance provides statutory guidance to local housing authorities on the delivery of their homelessness functions. Authorities are legally required to have regard to the Code when making decisions and it carries significant weight in interpreting how statutory duties should be applied in practice. Centrepoint has long campaigned for the Homelessness Code of Guidance to be amended to include a dedicated chapter on young people which would clarify local authorities’ obligations at the point of presentation, initial interview, and assessment, and ensure greater consistency in understanding what constitutes acceptable practice.
In December 2025, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) unveiled the National Plan to End Homelessness, which included a commitment to introduce a dedicated youth chapter within the Homelessness Code of Guidance. The inclusion of a youth-specific chapter would help local authorities to recognise the distinct nature of youth homelessness and clarify their duties under homelessness legislation, so that they can effectively fulfil their responsibilities to young people. The chapter has the potential to reduce the risk of vulnerable young people being turned away due to resource pressures. It would also strengthen the ability of young people and their advocates to challenge gatekeeping and ensure they receive the support to which they are entitled, by enabling them to refer to explicit guidance that clearly sets out local authorities’ duties.
Centrepoint has collaborated with the law firm Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer, as well as 12 sector partners, including Become, Coram, Crisis, Depaul, Herts Young Homeless, Homeless Link, LSE: Housing and Communities, New Horizon Youth Centre, Shelter, St Basils, YMCA, and young people to develop a youth chapter suitable for insertion into the Homelessness Code of Guidance. We are calling on MHCLG to include our proposed chapter into the Homelessness Code of Guidance in order to ensure that young people’s needs and vulnerabilities are properly recognised, and that local authorities are equipped to provide appropriate, consistent, and effective support.