Housing

Housing allocation

Guidance on stock allocation for social housing providers.

Allocations responsibilities

All local authorities are responsible for their own allocations policy as long as it conforms to legislation under the 1996 Housing Act.

To give a quick overview of the legislation this requires the authority to have and publish a scheme that determines priorities and the procedure for allocating housing. A number of classes of household must be given reasonable preference under an allocation scheme.

Reasonable Preference Groups

  • people who are homeless
  • people occupying insanitary, overcrowded, or otherwise unsatisfactory housing
  • people who need to move for medical or welfare reasons, and
  • people who need to move to a particular location - for example, to be nearer to special training opportunities, or special medical facilities - and who would suffer hardship if they were unable to do so

Transfers for existing tenants

Legislation gives people who wish to transfer the same rights as new applicants to apply for/be allocated property, if the transferee is either a secure or introductory tenant of a local authority or an assured tenant of a registered social landlord.

Applying to move to another area

Existing tenants and new applicants may apply to another local authority in whose area they do not currently live. As a result of the 2002 Act, it is no longer open to an authority to exclude anyone on the grounds that they do not have a local connection with their district. However, housing authorities are still allowed to apply the local connection rule when determining relative priorities between applicants who fall within one of the reasonable preference categories.

Overcrowding and Space Standard

The space standard is based on how many people live together in the house. Under this, children less than a year old are not counted, and children under ten are counted as half a person. A room is counted as available for sleeping accommodation if it is the type that can be used in the locality for either a living room or a bedroom.

The table shows the maximum number of people who can live in a house before the space standard is contravened.

Number of rooms

Number of persons

1

2

2

3

3

5

4

7 and a half

5

2 for each room

 

 

 

 

 

Under the 1996 Housing Act local authorities have to give reasonable preference for certain groups of people when framing their allocations policy. One of these groups is 'people occupying insanitary or overcrowded housing, or otherwise living in unsatisfactory housing conditions'. Unfortunately in some areas there is a shortage of social housing and local authorities may have to prioritise.

The issue of children of opposite sex sharing a room comes under the Housing Act 1985. It says that a dwelling is overcrowded if two people of opposite sex are sharing a room, unless they are living together as husband and wife. However, if the children are under ten they are exempted from this.

Choice Based Lettings

It is a Communities and Local Government target that all local authorities will have choice based allocations schemes by 2010. For more information please see the Choice Based Lettings section.

Further information

Further information or enquiries about allocations of accommodation should be addressed to:

Allocations and access to housing policy
Communities and Local Government
1/E2 Eland House
Bressenden Place
London
SW1E 5DU

Tel: 020 7944 4400

Originally published: 1 March 2005

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