Allocations priority maintenance overview

All local authorities are free to set their own housing allocation policy, provided they adhere to certain rules. By law, local authorities must clearly set out procedures and priorities by which social housing will be allocated, and must ensure that information on these policies is published. There are a number of factors in determining the likelihood of applicants securing social housing, specifically:

The availability of council housing or housing association properties in the area
The priority awarded to the individual applicant
The position of the applicant on the waiting list relative to others with higher priority.

Most local authorities employ a points or a banding system, and allocate extra priority to those people who have lived in the local area for a certain length of time. These take into account how long applicants have been on the waiting list for social housing, their level of housing need, and other priorities. The law also dictates that certain groups should get 'reasonable preference' for council housing, specifically:

Applicants who would be defined as threatened with homelessness and in priority need because the current accommodation is no longer available to them and there is no suitable alternative accommodation.
People living in unsanitary, overcrowded or otherwise unsatisfactory housing e.g. lacking sole use of bathroom, kitchen or inside W.C; inadequate cold or hot water supplies, electricity and / or gas; property in a state of disrepair which cannot be resolved by action from the Council's environmental health service, etc.
People who need to move for medical or welfare reasons.
People who need to move to a particular location (for example, to be nearer to special medical facilities) and would otherwise suffer hardship. These points are not generally available to applicants who have a need common to many others, such as wanting to be near to a particular estate or school unless there are exceptional distinguishing factors.

Housing associations also operate their own waiting lists and lettings policies, although they are expected to make a proportion of their lettings available to applicants approved by local authorities.

Civica Cx Housing allows any number of priorities and awards to be created in line with the housing organisation's policy, with each defined as being either manually or automatically allocated. For automatically allocated priorities, one or more rules are defined to control the conditions around which points are applied. In addition, points-based priorities can be allocated to applicants relative to the elapsed time. For instance, an annual points-based increment may be allocated to reflect an applicant's time on the waiting list, up to a maximum threshold value.

Separate help articles have been created for each key aspect of allocations priority maintenance, including: