Leaving prison or youth detention

You can apply for a Discharge Grant of £46 when you leave prison, and an extra £50 could be paid directly to an accommodation provider if you arrange accommodation before you leave. If you think you may become homeless on leaving prison or youth detention accommodation, you have the right to apply to us for help. 

When deciding if we owe you a legal duty to provide help, one of the things we will look at is whether you have a priority need. You may have a priority need if you are vulnerable because: 

• of the length of time you have spent in prison or custody;
• you are receiving probation service supervision;
• of the time that has passed since your release, and you have still not found or been able to maintain accommodation; or
• you don’t have any existing support networks, like family or friends. 

If we assess that you have made yourself intentionally homeless, we will no longer have a duty to provide you with help. 

If when you are put into prison or youth detention accommodation you have a home, we may be able to help you to keep that home so that you can move back into it upon your release. If you are given a prison sentence of 12 months or longer, you will be given an Offender Manager. You should speak to this person about what help they can give to you. 

If you have been given a sentence of less than 12 months, you will be supported by a Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC) within the prison or you may be supervised by a Probation Officer. You should speak to these services about what you can be given. 

If you rent your property and your household still live there, you should try to keep paying the monthly rental payments so your tenancy will continue. This means that your landlord cannot rent it to someone else and you can return to the property upon your release. A partner can make the payments for you, and they may be entitled to receive help from the Government to do so. 

If you rent your property, your landlord may agree to allow someone else to live there and pay the rent. This is known as “sub-letting”. You should discuss this with your landlord and make sure that they have given permission for someone else to live there. 

If you own your property with a mortgage, you should pay the mortgage repayments otherwise your bank may try to take your home. Someone else can pay the repayments for you, but you should both seek legal advice before doing this to check whether it will give that person any rights over your property. 

If your property is mortgaged and your sentence is short, you can speak to your bank to ask if they can arrange a payment holiday or for interest only repayments for a period. There may be financial help available to pay your mortgage. We can help you negotiate with your landlord or lender. We can also help you to apply for benefits. 

We can provide specialist advice before you leave prison or youth detention accommodation. 

We can provide support when you are in custody to help you to retain your existing home. If this has been possible, we will provide advice on your rights to move back to that property and how to protect your tenancy in the future. 

We can help you to make contact with your family to support a return home (if that is safe), even if it is only on a temporary basis to give you more time to find alternative accommodation. We can provide negotiation/mediation services  to help with this. 

It may be unsafe for you to return to your previous home, for example if you were involved in gang activity. We will work with you and the police to consider the options in these cases, including whether additional security measures at your home could help or whether you need to relocate to another area. 

If you do not have a safe home to return to, we can help you find a new home. 

If you have been given a sentence of less than 12 months, you will be supported by a Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC) within the prison, or you may be supervised by a Probation Officer. If you are given a prison sentence of 12 months or longer, you will be given an Offender Manager. 

We will work with the CRC, Probation Service or Offender Manager. 

CRCs will prepare a resettlement plan to help you to find housing, tackle debt and money problems, find work and deal with other issues, such as medical problems. Your prison or youth detention centre may have a resettlement officer who can offer support to you prior to your release to help you find accommodation and apply for work or benefits. 

Your prison or youth detention centre may have a peer advisor scheme which is when a fellow prisoner is trained by a housing advice agency and can give you some practical advice. 

Your prison or youth detention centre will usually establish what your immigration status is before you are released and will work with the immigration services. If you need housing, we will assess if you are eligible. The rules are the same for every foreign national, whether they have been in prison or not. 

If you do not have the right to remain in the UK, you may be removed to an immigration removal centre or assisted to return home through the Early Removal Scheme. 

We can help you with financial advice and budgeting so that you know what you can afford. 

We can help you apply for financial help, which could be benefits, discretionary housing payments or financial support to obtain new accommodation. 

We may be able to arrange temporary accommodation until you find a permanent home. 

We can help you apply for social housing. If you have been in a prison or a youth detention centre which is in a different location to where you usually live, you may still be assessed to have a local connection if: 

• you have family in the area;
• you work in the area; or
• there is a special reason for you to be connected to the area, for example you need to meet your Probation Officer or go to an attendance centre in the area. 

When you apply for social housing or temporary accommodation, you will be treated in the same way as anyone else. It will not matter that you have been in prison or a youth detention centre, but anti-social behaviour can be considered as it is with anyone else. 

If you are under a Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangement (MAPPA) we know that it may be harder for you to find accommodation so we will work with all the agencies involved to help you find a home, which may be a bail or probation hostel. 

We can help you apply for tenancies in the private rented sector. We can give you advice about which convictions you must tell a potential landlord about if you are asked. We can help you consider if you can afford to buy a home or use a shared ownership scheme. 

Your prison or youth detention centre will usually establish what your immigration status is before you are released and will work with the immigration services. If you need housing, we will assess if you are eligible. The rules are the same for every foreign national, whether they have been in prison or not. 

If you do not have the right to remain in the UK, you may be removed to an immigration removal centre or assisted to return home through the Early Removal Scheme.