Hundreds of young people have contacted Bolton Council at risk of losing their homes in recent years.

A total of 336 people aged between 16-24 approached the authority when they were without a home, or at risk of becoming homeless in 2018/19.

According to a report published by Centrepoint, a youth homelessness charity, just 15 per cent of young people had a "positive outcome" in this period.

Dave Bagley, from Urban Outreach, was concerned that the figures, obtained by a Freedom of Information request to Bolton Council, did not present an accurate picture of the situation in the borough.

He said: "Bolton has always been quite progressive with the services available for young people to tackle homelessness, and we still have most of those services available today.

"Something is obviously happening to prevent these people from sleeping rough.

"If it wasn't, then we would expect to see a huge number of young people on the streets and we just don't. It's not something I've seen, and I've not heard about it anecdotally either.

"There seems to be a glitch in the figures because if there was nowhere else for them to go then we would see them on the streets."

Centrepoint's report shows that only 47 people were successful in keeping a place to stay after a 56 day relief or prevention period, meant to take people off the streets or stop them from losing their home.

Four were deemed "statutorily homeless" and were housed as part of the council's main duty under the Housing Act 1996.

No information was publicly available about what happens to those who fall out of the service, and there was no clarification offered on other outcomes.

Bolton's figures rate poorly against the national picture, where one in three people experience a positive outcome, twice the amount from the borough.

One per cent of young people in the town are homeless, or at risk of becoming homeless.

Mr Bagley added: "There's a lot of hard work that goes into preventing young people from becoming homeless, with fantastic services provided by Backup around prevention and intervention to stop young people continuing down that path and they're always busy.

"Although there aren't people sleeping on the streets, it is still a huge problem that we need to address.

"There will never be a point where youth homelessness isn't an issue because the moment we take our eye off the ball is when it'll all go wrong very quickly."