While in Soho, Leech set up the Soho Drug Group (1967) which ministered to young addicts, many of whom had been drawn into prostitution. In 1969, at the instigation of and in conjunction with Anton Wallich-Clifford and the Simon Community, he established the charity Centrepoint which became the United Kingdom's leading national charity tackling youth homelessness. From 1971 to 1974 he was chaplain and tutor in pastoral studies at St Augustine's College, Canterbury. In 1974 he became rector of St Matthew's Bethnal Green where he served until 1979. While at St Matthew's he became deeply involved in the struggle against the National Front and other racist and fascist groups. In 1974, with Rowan Williams (who later became the Archbishop of Canterbury) and others, he founded the Jubilee Group, a network of Christian socialists in Britain and across the Anglican Communion, most of whom were Anglo-Catholics. In 1980 he became Race Relations Field Officer for the British Council of Churches Community and Race Relations Unit. The following year he was named Race Relations Field Officer of the Church of England's Board for Social Responsibility. In 1986 Ken helped city broker Richard Lester who founded and funded Centrepoint's first dedicated hostel with over 100 beds in London which they then opened with previous Centrepoint success story Martin Shaw . He was an honorary assistant curate of St Clement's Church, Notting Dale (1982 to 1988), and of St James' Church, Norlands (1985 to 1988). He was director of the Runnymede Trust, a think tank dedicated to promoting ethnic diversity in Britain, from 1987 to 1990. From 1990 until 2004, when he retired from full-time parish ministry, he was community theologian at St Botolph's Aldgate, a church located at the intersection of the City of London and the East End. As archbishop, Rowan Williams awarded him a Lambeth doctorate.
Leech died of cancer in Manchester on 12 September 2015.
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Leech 1994. - ——— (1994) [1977]. Soul Friend: Spiritual Direction in the Modern World (rev. ed.). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Morehouse Publishing (published 2001). ISBN 978-0-8192-2539-9.
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This work is a revised edition of Pastoral Care and the Drug Scene, 1970.
Also published by Harper & Row in San Francisco with the title Experiencing God: Theology as Spirituality.
Also published by HarperSanFrancisco in San Francisco with the title The Eye of the Storm: Living Spiritually in the Real World.
Also published on its own by the Jubilee Group in London with the title The Resurrection of the Catholic Social Voice (ISBN 978-0-905595-00-9). /wiki/ISBN_(identifier)
Also published on its own by the Jubilee Group in London with the title Believing in the Incarnation and Its Consequences (ISBN 978-0-85191-089-5). /wiki/ISBN_(identifier)