About HelpRouter UK

HelpRouter UK is a free signposting service for people in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. You tell it where you are and what has happened, and it sends you to the organisation best placed to help: a council team, a national helpline, a charity directory or the police. There are no accounts, no posting and nothing to download.

What it does

The service covers three situations. I need help routes homelessness, food and essentials, advice on benefits, debt, housing and immigration, mental health support and domestic abuse. I want to report a concern covers someone sleeping rough, adult or child safeguarding, and hate crime or antisocial behaviour. I want to help covers local and skills-based volunteering, donating food or items, and supporting homelessness charities.

Routes change by nation where the system is different. Rough sleeping is reported through StreetLink in England and Wales, through the local council in Scotland and through the Northern Ireland Housing Executive in Northern Ireland. Advice in Scotland goes to Citizens Advice Scotland rather than Citizens Advice. A 999 button is shown on every step, and the mental health and domestic abuse routes put the relevant 24-hour helpline first.

Open Referral UK

Open Referral UK (ORUK) is the open data standard for describing community services in the UK. It gives councils and voluntary organisations a common format for publishing what a service is, who it is for, where it runs and how to contact it, so that any directory or tool can read the same data.

HelpRouter UK is designed around ORUK. The current web router works from a curated list of national and nation-specific services so that every route ends somewhere that can act. Where a council publishes its services in ORUK format, that feed can be connected so results become specific to a place. If your area publishes ORUK data and you would like it connected, please get in touch.

Data and privacy

HelpRouter UK has no user database. Postcodes are sent to the free postcodes.io service to work out which nation and council area you are in, and your choices are carried in the page address so that you can share or bookmark your results. The optional details box on the last step is not stored.

Who builds it

HelpRouter UK is built and run by WAPPDEV UK, a UK software company founded by Khaled Doulami. WAPPDEV UK also publishes Docavo, which turns receipts, invoices and statements into VAT-safe records for UK sole traders and landlords, and AbuseRoute, a private, access-controlled API that returns registrar and hosting-network abuse contacts for a domain.

Councils, voluntary-sector partners and anyone who spots an out-of-date route can reach us at contact@wappdev.co.uk.