A74Delivery risk: AmberGate: pending
Prevent avoidable loss of rented homes
Existing action A74, assessed at the same scope.
Not stated in the review record; treated as a provisional single-reviewer assessment, not an approved business case.
- Who and where
- Private and social renters in England threatened with homelessness through a notice or rent arrears, in defined council areas, before a prevention duty would otherwise fail. (from the action record) Jurisdiction: England.
- Result so far
- Range if completed: 16.0–22.0 out of 30 (equal weights; not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co))
- Funded now (baseline)
- Funded baseline: the 56-day prevention duty (extended to section 8 notices from 1 May 2026), the Homelessness, Rough Sleeping and Domestic Abuse Grant (£885.0m in 2026–27), the Housing Loss Prevention Advice Service and a £16m Legal Support Grant (October 2026 to March 2029). Testing a defined early-advice offer against comparison areas is a UK Facts proposal, not government policy. (from the action record)
- The change assessed (marginal)
- Test early rent-arrears/legal advice and targeted assistance for a defined at-risk cohort before homelessness occurs. (from the 6 October review)
- Domain home: Housing
- In the national plan: Related option, assessed separately
What the evidence supports—and the next decision
Prevention-duty outcomes describe households served; they do not measure how many tenancies a new advice service would additionally save.
AI-assisted analytical follow-up · 8 October 2026. Proposed appraisal design; the attributed scores below are unchanged. No funding or delivery agreement is implied.
- Define the change
- Test early legal and money advice for a specified arrears or eviction-risk cohort beyond the existing prevention duty and funded advice.
- Test whether it works
- Suitable tenancies sustained, repeat homelessness, court outcomes and temporary accommodation at 6 and 12 months, compared with similar households.
- Establish the cost
- Advice, staff, targeted assistance and follow-up minus verified avoidable accommodation costs; grants and transfers need separate accounting.
- Protect against harm
- Do not sustain unsafe tenancies or exclude complex households to improve the success rate.
Read with the outcome evidence and sources in the full assessment. Monitoring proposals are not existing baseline measurements. A numerical benefit or cost score needs evidence for the defined increment, not just the scale of the problem.
Full assessment of Prevent avoidable loss of rented homes: ten criteria, scenarios, delivery, costs and monitoring
The ten criteria (0–3)
Each criterion is scored 0 to 3 by the reviewer. “Not yet assessed” means unknown: it is never counted as zero.
Scale and severity (Sc)3 of 3 — Severe harm across a broad population
Increment beyond baseline (Ad)2 of 3 — Specific material change to existing delivery
Confidence in the proposed action (Ev)1 of 3 — Indirect, mixed, modelled or weak causal support
Expected incremental benefit (Bn)Not yet assessed
Residual harms (Hm)1 of 3 — Material harm/unresolved mitigation
Incremental affordability (Co)Not yet assessed
Delivery capacity (Ca)2 of 3 — Stretched but plausibly obtainable
Distribution (Fa)3 of 3 — Benefits concentrated on disadvantaged people with assessed burdens
Meaningful first outcome (Ti)2 of 3 — More than one and up to three years
Readiness (Rd)2 of 3 — Named commissioning/allocation/coordination step
Four weightings
Normalised as 10 × weighted sum ÷ sum of weights, on a 0–30 scale. Where a criterion is not yet assessed, the range is the lowest and highest result if it were later scored 0 or 3 — not a score, a confidence interval or a rank.
- Equal weights: Range if completed: 16.0–22.0 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Evidence doubled: Range if completed: 15.5–20.9 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Scale doubled: Range if completed: 17.3–22.7 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Cost ignored (the funding gate still applies): Range if completed: 17.8–21.1 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
Funding gate: Not passed — the cost is not yet assessed or no allocation is committed for this scope. Ignoring cost in a weighting never removes the gate.
Delivery risk and gate
Delivery risk shown: AmberReview’s claim: Amber. Best the recorded evidence allows: Amber.
Review’s reason: Define arrears/risk trigger, legal advice and assistance design; cost staff, grants and sustained tenancies. Assess additional prevention against existing duties. Proposed owners: councils, housing/advice providers and landlords.
Why it is not Green yet
- Scope (population, place and increment) not verified against the delivery baseline.
- No verified owner with the powers in place.
- Delivery capacity not verified.
- Lifetime incremental costs not complete.
- No credible funding (a committed allocation for the scope).
- Safeguards not specified.
- Monitoring lacks a metric, a data source or a baseline.
Green needs verified scope, a verified owner with the powers, verified capacity, complete lifetime costs with credible funding, specified safeguards and monitoring with a metric, source and baseline. Amber means appraisal gaps remain; Red means a material delivery obstacle. Red does not mean unimportant.
Gate: Pending — appraisal incomplete (review label: “Pending baseline verification, incremental costing and funding; not a rollout approval”).
Why: Scores incomplete; Funding gate not passed (cost unknown or no credible funding).
The gate is separate from national list membership: being listed does not make an option eligible, and an eligible option need not be listed.
Cost and funding
Lifetime costing: Not established. Review: “Not fully costed in this review”.
Still to cost: Define arrears/risk trigger, legal advice and assistance design; cost staff, grants and sustained tenancies. Assess additional prevention against existing duties. Proposed owners: councils, housing/advice providers and landlords.
Funding status: not identified.
Owner, powers and capacity
Proposed owner: councils, housing/advice providers and landlords (proposed, unverified).
Powers: needs a decision or allocation. Capacity: unverified.
Powers and capacity read from the review’s Rd and Ca anchors; no proposed owner has agreed to act (the review: “Proposed owners have not agreed to act”).
- England:
- Councils (Housing Act 1996 Part 7 prevention duty), with MHCLG and the Ministry of Justice (legal aid and the Housing Loss Prevention Advice Service) (action record)
- Scotland:
- not assessed
- Wales:
- not assessed
- Northern Ireland:
- not assessed
Wales created the prevention duty model (Housing (Wales) Act 2014 s.66); Scotland has new prevention duties (Housing (Scotland) Act 2025 Part 5); Northern Ireland’s Housing Executive delivers homelessness services. Not assessed.
Dependencies, safeguards and risks
Depends on: None recorded.
Safeguards
None specified yet.
Monitoring and measured results
Metric: Define and baseline the outcome described in delivery requirements before approval.
Data source: Not yet named. Baseline: Not yet established.
Measures already on the domain page
- Prevention duties ending with accommodation secured for six months or more: latest 54.7% (19,230 of 35,130) (January–March 2026); baseline not published (England).
A page measure is not necessarily the review’s metric; linking the two is an editorial decision still to be made.
Evidence for the outcome
Outcome: Define and baseline the outcome described in delivery requirements before approval.
UK prevention evaluations and tenancy-sustainment reviews offer relevant but limited transfer evidence. Do not import Housing First effects into general renter advice.
Sources: gov.uk (not yet in the source register)
SWOT points it addresses
Review record
Assessment status: Not stated in the review record; treated as a provisional single-reviewer assessment, not an approved business case.
Reviewer: Original assessment author (name not supplied). Reviewed: 6 October 2026.
Scored in the working review of 6 October 2026 on the shared ten-criterion scale (one reviewer); not independently calibrated.
An editorial screening framework by one reviewer, not a formal appraisal or business case. Proposed owners have not agreed to act.