How many households each quarter the council formally accepted a legal duty to help — either to stop them losing their home (prevention) or to find them somewhere after they became homeless (relief). It measures the size of the homelessness workload the law puts on the council, not how well it copes. High means heavy demand; low means a quieter caseload.
| name | owed_prevention_or_relief |
|---|---|
| dataset | 06-hclic-temporary-accommodation |
| kind | extracted |
| type | count |
| unit | households per quarter |
| grain | local authority (England) |
| role | feature |
| source | data/Statutory_Homelessness_Detailed_Local_Authority_Data_202603.ods, sheet A1, col 3 'Assessed as owed a duty Owed a prevention or relief dutyTotal' |
| period | Quarter (Jan–Mar 2026 flow); quarterly series from 2018 Q2 |
| missingness | Small counts rounded and some values suppressed; some LAs miss or partially complete H-CLIC returns and are imputed/flagged by MHCLG (see Notes sheet); previous-quarter figures routinely revised. |
| score_note | Statutory-duty inflow used as a flow denominator; demand context in itself. |
| peer_group | council class (district / county / unitary / metropolitan / London) — not yet scored on the leaderboard |
Households assessed in the quarter as owed a statutory prevention or relief duty — the new statutory caseload. Used (annualised) as the flow denominator in the ta_per_new_duty backlog ratio. Quarterly flow; previous quarter is revised at each release.