Allocations and Lettings – Taking Customer Choice Forward in England?

ABSTRACT

A step change has taken place in allocations policy in England with the recent adoption of choice-based letting (CBL). This centres on a customer-oriented approach with households responding to adverts. It requires the customer to indicate preferences based on social housing market information as opposed to landlords dictating an offer of a vacant property based on a measure of need. Innovative schemes by social housing organizations in the late 1990s provided the foundation for subsequent endorsement by the government. There have been many reasons for its adoption, including a greater customer orientation, tackling low demand, building sustainable neighbourhoods and improving organizational efficiency. Initial evaluation suggests positive benefits from the customer perspective of the lettings process (e.g. transparency), compared with traditional bureaucratic rationing systems. Nevertheless, there have been concerns on, for example, the impact on vulnerable groups and the extent to which CBL contributes to sustainable communities. More fundamentally, CBL operates within the constraints of national policy and local housing markets. It radically alters the allocations process but by itself it cannot rebalance high and low demand housing markets.

KEY WORDS:

• Social housing
• allocations
• choice-based lettings

Notes

1. In Scotland and Wales there has been less emphasis on the adoption of CBL. In the former, the National Assembly has placed more emphasis on the development of common housing registers, while, in the latter, the Welsh Assembly Government has partly funded a number of pilot schemes.