Consultation on allocating social housing (affordable rents)

Overview

Earlier this year the rules regarding how new social housing was to be funded were changed.

Instead of most money coming from Central Government most will now be raised locally by the introduction of “affordable rents”.

In practice this means that social landlords can now set the rent of the property at up to 80% of the market rent.

Approximately 1 in 3 properties that we allocate new tenants to will be at a rent level higher than those on the old “social rent” levels.

At the moment we allocate a property to the household with the highest number of points who best fits the property available.

We would like your opinion as to whether we need to introduce a different way of allocating “affordable rent” properties.

If we made a change then this would be through a Choice Based Letting Scheme (CBL).

CBL differs from traditional allocations scheme. Rather than the council matching a household to the property a property is advertised and customers with sufficient priority can bid to become the tenant. Customers have more choice in that they can wait for a property to become available and can bid for more than property.

Customers on the housing register with enough points would then be able to either bid for an affordable rent property, or wait to be offered a “social rent” property.