Housing Allocations Scheme 2023

The time a household spent on our Housing Register is recognised under the current Allocation Scheme by an applicant’s priority date, usually the date they joined the Register.

We are suggesting that we use waiting points so that a household’s priority for rehousing, and their position on our Housing Register, more clearly reflects how long they have been waiting for a better home – the longer they have waited, the more points they will have. 10 points would be added to the application total each year under the current proposals.

For example, social tenants who currently have more bedrooms than they need will be able to move to a new, smaller home and the resulting vacated family sized home can be made available to an overcrowded family in social housing, then their previous home can be given to another family and so on. Chains start and continue with tenants in social housing. They can be ended at any stage by allocating a property to a homeless family or someone on the register who is not already in social housing.

We give different points for different reasons for needing a new home. As well as using points we plan to use a banding system to help explain the different levels of priority we will give for different points categories.  There will be four bands ranging from the most acute housing need down to more general housing needs.

You would stay in your allocated band unless your circumstances change and you then qualify for a different band’s priority points.  An accumulation of points would not lead to a change of band. Properties would be ring-fenced to a particular, or multiple bands when advertised.

If you are homeless, the Council may have a legal responsibility to provide you with temporary accommodation. However, you can choose to move into a private rented sector (PRS) home with our help instead.  You will be given a higher priority (200 points) on our Housing Register for rehousing to a Council or housing association home than if you choose to stay in temporary accommodation where you would have 100 points.

Analysis of the impact of the Covid 19 pandemic on paid work showed that some parts of our community were more affected than others. Members of our community who are Black, Asian or Minority or Multiple Ethnic were more likely to have lost employment and/or pay, especially if they were female. We are also aware that some members of our community face more barriers to getting paid work – for example, residents with disabilities or autism, or parents who cannot find affordable childcare. Because some members of our communities will find it more difficult to find or to keep paid work, we do not think it is fair to use it to give a higher priority for rehousing over the long-term. However, because many households already have paid work points, we feel it is fair that they keep them under the new Allocation Scheme.

Each year, we will set and publish a quota or a share of the total number of available homes that we will try to allocate or let to different types of housing priority on our Housing Register. In other words, we will set a 'target’ for the number of homes we let to different types of housing need. We will also publish figures on our actual lets to the different types of housing need, so you can compare our lettings to our quotas.