The Housing and Property Law Daily web site reports that Stoke City Council has replaced its choice-based housing allocation system with a more needs-based system following a review by an external consultancy. It reports that the Council has implemented a new process from today (31/5) that allocates properties on a needs basis.
The HPLD site quoted from an article in This is Staffordshire, where the council’s cabinet member for housing, Gwen Hassall, stated:
"The move will mean that those people in greatest housing need will be helped more quickly and effectively as the new system will be more streamlined.
"It will save the authority money while putting those customers in greatest need at the heart of the processes.
"Customers who do not qualify for local authority housing will be given advice and assistance to suit their own particular circumstances."
HPLD also quoted from the council’s website:
“The Choice Based Lettings system will be taken away. A more personal property matching system will take its place. The customer will still choose where they want to live, but instead of placing bids on properties, people will be invited to discuss their housing needs with a Housing Needs Officer. The Housing Needs Officer will then work to meet the customer’s needs in the best way possible.”
Time will tell whether the changes work for the citizens of Stoke, and we hope they do. For those of us around when choice-based letting was piloted in the mid-late 1990's and then gradually introduced across the country, it's interesting to see the allocation process go almost full circle, back to a stated "needs" based approach, albeit with a retained choice element.
The quotes about customers being "invited to discuss their housing needs" and officers trying to meet them "in the best way possible" mirror almost exactly reports written throughout the 1970's and 80's as we moved on from time-served waiting lists in (sometimes doomed) attempts to better reflect changes in demand, social structure and national political direction.
What goes around comes around, the saying goes. What doesn't seem to come around though is an increase in the overall quantum of good quality, affordable housing that keeps pace with household creation, continued reductions in existing stock and that also addresses the continuing impacts of the restrictions on market access to first time buyers (and second time buyers in a new trend we read) in the private housing market.
It seems that both portfolio holders and housing needs officers in Stoke and many other places are still left rationing a scarce and increasingly valuable resource through a variety of allocation systems that aren't intended to and will never address basic supply-side problems. Neither will further diversification of tenure models properly address the deficit either.
We remain a country where renting is more often about a meeting a need rather than a desire and purchase a desire that is failing to meet all needs.
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