Agenda item

Purpose: To monitor the progress of the recommendations made on the Council’s Housing Allocation Policy.

Cathy Dodson (Housing Strategy Team Leader) introduced the report to Members of the Commission. Members heard that the current Allocation Policy was adopted in October 2013. In December 2014 the Executive approved amendments to the policy in light of the new Statutory Guidance. Cathy Dodson informed that the report sought to update Members on the implementation of those amendments.

The key changes agreed by the Executive were as follows:

·         Qualification Criteria – amendment made to the local connection qualifying criteria to residency or meaningful paid employment of at least 16 hours a week for 2 consecutive years - other aspects of local connection criteria remained the same.

·         Social Tenants and Labour Mobility – amendment made to allow for exceptions to local connection qualifying criteria to be applied to certain social tenants who need to move in order to sustain or take up employment.

·         Foster Carers – inclusion in the policy to award an additional bedroom for approved foster carers.

·         Homeless Households – new wording inserted to allow deferral of a CHR application when a household is placed into temporary accommodation following acceptance of a full homelessness duty to allow the Housing Service to identify support needs.

To be able to fully implement these changes some modifications were required to the Housing Register data base. To ensure the amendments were implemented with minimal impact on both housing staff and service users, the software provider was requested to build a semi automated assessment. Cathy Dodson explained that the service user would be required to answer three questions about their local connection as opposed to completing a whole new application form. The application was then automatically determined as Qualifying or Non Qualifying.

These changes were implemented on 1^st October 2015 at which point there were 2973 live applicants on the Housing Register. Due to the system changes all applicants would be required to answer the three questions before they could access their Home Choice account.

Applicants received advanced warning of these changes through a notice on the Home Choice website followed by a letter or email. Applicants were clearly advised that if they failed to answer the three questions by 23^rd October 2015 then they would be removed from the Housing Register. Cathy Dodson stressed that multiple attempts were made to contact people during this time to make sure they were aware of the impending changes (through letter, text or phone call).

Members heard that minimal numbers of people failed to re-register their interest and that every effort had been made to capture anyone who had previously been listed on the Housing Register.

Councillor Hilary Cole stated that a considerable amount of effort had taken place by the team to contact account holders and this was reflected in the numbers. Councillor Cole congratulated the team for their hard work.

Councillor Jones was impressed by the methodology used by the team – it seemed very thorough. He asked whether the team understood the reasons for those not re-registering their account. Cathy Dodson stated that it was difficult to know the exact reasons but she assumed that some may not have been eligible so decided they would not re-register. Members heard that the accounts had been inactive for over 12 months so it be reasonable to assume that their original need for a property was no longer present.

Cathy Dodson advised that the implementation of the amendments had concluded with minimal disruption to the service user. It was expected that the overall number of applications would reduce as a consequence of some applicants failing to respond to the review request. The overall percentage of Qualifying Applicants had not changed significantly which confirmed the position that the team did not believe that the amendments would impact a high number of applicants.

Councillor Webster advised that she had received feedback from a local residents regarding the changes and she was pleased to hear that residents felt the process was outlined clearly.

Resolved that the report was noted