Access to housing is paramount for domestic abuse survivors, given that domestic abuse generally takes place in the home. However, systemic gatekeeping across local authorities – where bureaucratic or other obstacles are placed in the way of those seeking statutory support – is stopping many survivors from accessing the help they urgently need and are legally entitled to. As one survivor seeking housing support put it, experiencing local authority gatekeeping can feel like being ‘abused twice – once by the perpetrator, and once by the council’.

In order to highlight this widespread gatekeeping of housing support for victims of domestic abuse, on 22 September 2022 the Public Interest Law Centre (PILC) published ‘Abused twice’: the ‘gatekeeping’ of housing support for domestic abuse survivors in every London borough. It contains witness testimonies from survivors and frontline domestic violence advocates across all 32 London boroughs. PILC has also written a legal submission to Simon Clarke MP, the levelling up, housing and communities secretary, and the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, to demand an independent investigation into local authorities’ widespread failure to provide housing support to domestic abuse survivors.

The report documents widespread delays to processing housing applications, with some participants waiting months or even years for an outcome, and a failure to meet legal obligations such as providing emergency accommodation and housing domestic abuse survivors in suitable accommodation. As a result, some survivors were forced to remain in abusive homes, others were severely overcrowded, while some survivors had to sleep on friends’ floors, in cars and even on park benches.

PILC believes the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 will not resolve the issues highlighted in its report. The Act does nothing to address the underlying causes of council ‘gatekeeping’, which include a chronic shortage of social housing and the severe underfunding of local authorities over more than a decade of austerity. PILC urges the government to commission an urgent investigation into the widespread failure to provide housing support to domestic abuse survivors, and to provide funding and training to solve this systemic problem. Until this happens, it argues, local authorities will continue to act unlawfully on a daily basis and domestic abuse survivors will continue to be ‘abused twice’.