Communities and Local Government

• Corporate
• Newsroom
• Latest news
• More funding for housing choice

www.communities.gov.uk

More funding for housing choice

Published	12 December 2008

More tenants will be able to have a greater say over their housing options and where they wish to live following a £1 million allocation announced today by Housing Minister Iain Wright.

Over 30 councils, with their partner housing associations, will be able to offer greater choice to new and existing tenants after successfully bidding for funding to develop their Choice Based Lettings Schemes.

The schemes offer tenants greater mobility, choice and flexibility when looking at their housing options enabling them to move across different local authority areas.

The money from the Government's Regional Choice Fund today means that in total over 80 per cent of local authorities will have choice based lettings schemes in place once these new schemes go live. Nearly £20 million has been allocated for CBL schemes over the last 7 years.

The new successful sub-regional schemes are:

• Cumbria scheme
• Dorset Home Choice
• Tyne and Wear scheme
• Nottingham Outer Housing Market Area scheme
• North Northamptonshire scheme

Housing Minister Iain Wright said:

"We have seen councils across the South of England and other areas embrace the choice based lettings scheme and its benefits for tenants, and it is good to see the rest of the country is keen to offer this service too. Choice based lettings gives tenants greater control and choice over their housing, and by offering services across traditional local authority boundaries the costs for councils and housing associations reduce, while the housing opportunities for tenants increase, meaning a win for all concerned."

The funding announced today will also develop the services of the Greater Manchester pilot scheme, Pinpoint, which launched this July. Pinpoint offers housing choices across Greater Manchester and the increased funding will enable them to offer additional features, including a sub-regional accessible housing register. The register will help disabled people across the Greater Manchester region get the housing they need, and enable social landlords to make the best use of their adapted and accessible housing.

The Government remains on track to achieve its 2010 target for all local authorities to offer choice in social housing. The proposed schemes announced today will start to come on stream from the end of 2009.

Notes to editors

1. Communities and Local Government's 5 year housing plan, Sustainable Communities: Homes for All , published on 24 January 2005, set out the Government's plans for taking forward its choice based lettings policy. The aim is to have in place choice nationwide by 2010. The Government wants to build on the existing Department's target - for all local authorities to have adopted CBL by 2010 - by extending choice based lettings to cover, not only local authority and RSL properties, but also shared ownership, low cost home ownership, and properties to rent from private landlords. The Government also wants to develop choice-based lettings schemes on a regional and/or sub-regional basis, recognising that housing markets do not follow local authority boundaries.

2. The Department is making available £7 million over five years (2005-2010) to fund new sub-regional and regional CBL schemes. Applicants were invited to submit bids for the fourth round of funding by 10 October 2008. The bidding guidance documentation is available on the Department's website.

3. Sub-regional CBL brings together a number of local authorities and housing associations in schemes which cross local authority boundaries. There are a number of benefits from larger, cross-local authority, schemes: they enable partners to share ICT and advertising costs; for Registered Social Landlords (RSL) they cut the costs of being involved in several different schemes; they enable greater regional mobility; they break down artificial boundaries and recognise existing housing and labour markets: and they bring together a larger pool of available housing, giving tenants more choice and helping to ease localised problems of high demand.

4. The schemes proposed in the fourth round of bidding take into account existing housing market areas, or in some instances cover most or the whole of a county. Local authority partners in the successful schemes are as follows:

EAST MIDLANDS

North Northamptonshire: Wellingborough; Corby; East Northamptonshire;
and Kettering

Outer Nottinghamshire: Ashfield; Mansfield; and Newark and Sherwood

NE Derbyshire: extension of the scheme funded in the third round of the RCF to include Bassetlaw

NORTH WESTERN REGION

Cumbria: Carlisle; South Lakeland; Eden and Copeland; Allerdale

Chorley: is being funded to join an existing scheme involving South Ribble and Preston which has not received funding from Communities and Local Government.

NORTH EASTERN REGION

Tyne and Wear: Sunderland; Newcastle; South Tyneside; Gateshead and
North Tyneside

Northumberland: extension of the scheme funded in the third round of the RCF to include: Alnwick; Wansbeck; Berwick and the future Northumberland unitary council.

YORKSHIRE AND HUMBERSIDE REGION

North Yorkshire: extension of the scheme funded in the third round of the RCF to include: Selby and Ryedale

SOUTH WEST REGION

Dorset: Bournemouth; Poole; Christchurch; East Dorset; North Dorset; Purbeck; West Dorset and Weymouth

SOUTH EASTERN REGION

Sussex Home Choice: this scheme which was supported in round 1 of the Regional Choice Fund is being extended to bring on board Eastbourne and Mid-Sussex.

Twitter

Keep up to date with the Department by following us on Twitter (external link).

Media enquiries

Visit our newsroom contacts page for media enquiry contact details.