Homelessness Prevention Bill

In May 2025, Colm Gildernew MLA launched a consultation on the introduction of a Private Member’s Bill he proposes to bring to the Assembly focused on Homelessness Prevention.

The proposed Bill is narrowly focused. At the current time, legislation in Northern Ireland sets out that a household can only present to the Housing Executive as homeless if they are threatened with homelessness within the next 28 days. The Bill proposes to increase the time limit from 28 days up to 60 days.

This would see the law line up with a change made to the Private Tenancies legislation here which increased the length of time of the ‘Notice to Quit’ period a landlord has to give up to 56 days when a tenancy has been in place for over a year.

In his consultation documents, Mr Gildernew outlined the rationale behind his Bill in the following way:

“Extending the period from 28 days to at least 60 days would allow the Housing Executive to intervene at an earlier stage and increase the likelihood of a suitable solution being found… We believe that by extending the time period whereby the Housing Executive has a statutory duty to support people threatened by homelessness, more people can be prevented from falling into homelessness.”

Our Response

On 30 July 2025, Homeless Connect submitted our response to the consultation. Mr Gildernew MLA had kindly met with us and a group of our members regarding the Bill in early July and this informed our thinking on the response. Some of the key points made include:

The importance of Homelessness Prevention

• Homeless Connect strongly believes that it is infinitely preferable to prevent homelessness before it happens rather than reacting to it after the fact.
• We believe that it is vitally important that preventing homelessness is a key policy focus of the Northern Ireland Executive as a whole. Reforming the legislation governing the homelessness system is one element which is required if this society is to take the journey to seeking to prevent homelessness before it happens rather than reacting to it after the fact.
• In terms of the extension of the legal limit from 28 days to at least 60 days, Homeless Connect is supportive of the proposal. It is widely accepted that if a household is threatened with homelessness four weeks is in practice a very tight window to provide preventative support. Moreover, people facing homelessness should not be expected to wait until four weeks before receiving statutory support and presenting as homeless to the Housing Executive. More time would obviously allow for more meaningful engagement in prevention activity, including advice.
• In our estimation, this proposal would remediate the illogicality of the current situation where a household can be presented with an NTQ eight weeks or twelve weeks before they are due to be evicted but be unable to present to the Housing Executive until 28 days before they are evicted.

The need for further reform

• While we do support this proposal, we have some cautions to note. Firstly, it has to be understood that this proposed amendment is only one part of a much wider picture when it comes to the homelessness legislation and prevention in particular. Assembly members need to be aware of what can be realistically achieved through this one change. There are several different strands to homelessness prevention. This is related to the fact that homelessness as a policy area is complex and multi-faceted in terms of its causes. A range of policy measures need to be adopted in tandem to seek to address the root causes of homelessness.
• Secondly, while supporting the intention behind this proposal, we strongly believe that Northern Ireland should follow England, Scotland and Wales in conducting a full-scale independent review of the homelessness legislation. The entire legislative architecture governing homelessness needs to be reconsidered.
• This proposal would be best considered as a potentially helpful first step towards the more wide-ranging reform we need to see. What we would not want to happen would be for Assembly members to believe that this proposal would end the need for further reform. It is our contention that more wide-ranging reform is necessary and the time has come for a review to take place to see this done efficiently and effectively.

You can read our full response here.