Care leavers exempted from local connection requirement to access social housing

Care leavers aged up to 25 will be exempted from the need to have a local connection with an area to access social housing, the government has announced.

The policy, designed to tackle homelessness among the group, was a commitment made by the previous government in last year’s Stable Homes, Built on Love strategy, based on a recommendation of the 2021-22 Independent Review of Children’s Social Care.

The exemption will also be applied to domestic abuse survivors and armed forces veterans.

According to government data for England, 2,270 care leavers aged 18-20 and 2,810 aged over 21 were owed a duty by councils to help them secure suitable accommodation on the grounds they were homeless in 2022-23. A further 1,440 18 to 20-year-olds and 1,390 were owed a duty to prevent them becoming homelessness on the basis that they were at risk of becoming so.

How local connections tests apply to care leavers

However, councils with housing responsibilities are permitted to apply a local connection test, in determining a person’s eligibility for homelessness support, with 89% doing so.

In the case of care leavers under 21, or older if in education or training specified in their pathway plan, those who owed leaving care duties by the same authority, or by the relevant county council in a two-tier area, are deemed to have a local connection with that area.

If a care leaver has lived in another authority for at least two years, including some time before they turned 16, they also have a local connection with this other area.

The government said it had written to councils to ask them to prioritise veterans, care leavers and domestic abuse survivors for social housing and would bring forward regulations enacting the change in due course.

‘Young people face care cliff’

Become, a charity for children in care and care leavers, welcomed the policy shift, saying that the current rules meant care leavers often faced the disruption of having to return to their local authority’s area, where they may have felt fear.

“Young people leaving care face a care cliff where important support and relationships disappear and they are expected to become independent overnight,” said chief executive Katharine Sacks-Jones. “Today’s announcement is a welcome step in addressing this and ensuring that young people leaving care have somewhere safe to live.”

For youth homelessness charity Centrepoint, policy and research manager Tom Kerridge said: “Care leavers often find themselves moved all over the country because of budgetary constraints and a lack of housing availability, so this is hugely positive for a particularly vulnerable and often neglected group.”

However, he warned that homelessness duties were “barely worth the paper they’re written on without a sufficient social housing stock and properly resourced councils”.