A charity that works with homeless and unsafe 16- to 24-year-olds in London has been turning away young people in need of support, due to increased demand on its services. 

New Horizon Youth Centre announced on LinkedIn that it is currently unable to welcome any new young people to use its services.

The charity has offered services to any young person in London who is homeless or unsafe for nearly 60 years and operates the only drop-in centre for young people facing homelessness in the capital. 

But it said: “Over the last three years, much like other homelessness services, we have seen growing demand on a weekly basis and despite efforts to limit the numbers of new young people we see each day, in less than three months we have seen impossibly high numbers of new and returning young people in desperate need of housing support. 

“We are a small charity, with a small building, limited resources and an incredibly hard-working staff group. It’s just not possible for us to continue letting more new young people in until we can work to support this large existing group of young people and progress their housing work. 

“We are doing this to try and maintain the high level of service and safety we pride ourselves on offering to young people. 

“We appreciate this means having to turn away young people in need and we are truly sorry for the negative impact this will have on some people. This is not a permanent change, and we hope to return to accepting new young people as soon as possible. We will keep our partners, website and social media updated.”

In the financial year to the end of March 2024, New Horizon recorded a total income of £3,964,029 and expenditure of £3,720,250, according to its latest accounts filed with the Charity Commission.

In the financial statements, the charity’s chair, Matthew Reed, said the team had been working in the face of “unparalleled pressures for young people facing homelessness” during this period.

“When the year came to an end, the team had supported nearly 1,500 young people – an astonishing rise in demand of 29 per cent in a single year”, Reed wrote in August last year. 

“In response to this escalating level of need for our services we faced some hard choices. With many other services restricting access or refusing referrals we had to have some really difficult conversations over what we could and could not do.”

Over the winter of 2023, the charity was forced to close online referrals to support services for several months to cope with the amount of young people attending its day centre every day. 

Online referrals are still closed, with the charity’s website stating it “will re-open referrals as soon as we can”.

The charity has a 2022-25 strategy that involves growing its headcount from 62 to 75 staff and increasing its budget from £3.8m to £4.7m, to enable it to grow the numbers of young people it can support from 1,500 to 1,650.

New Horizon Youth Centre has not responded to Third Sector’s request for comment.