News / Housing
Social housing waiting list slashed by 20% as thousands removed
The waiting list for social housing in Bristol has suddenly been slashed by around 20 per cent after 4,000 households were removed.
The number of households waiting for a home provided by Bristol City Council or a housing association has dropped from 22,000 to just over 18,000.
But questions have been raised about the 4,000 people who were taken off the waiting list. They were in bands three and four and had not placed a bid on a property for at least two years.
People on the waiting list are grouped into four bands of priority, with three and four the lowest.
Demand for social housing has shot up in recent years, partly due to private rented housing becoming increasingly unaffordable as rents grow much faster than wages.
At a meeting of the housing policy committee on Friday, Labour councillor Rob Logan said: “There are lots of reasons why people might not bid.
“Removing them from the register means they will not be able to apply for affordable housing which they otherwise would be able to do.”
Households had a time limit of four weeks to respond to their potential removal from the waiting list.
And people with “specific vulnerabilities” were not removed, recognising that some people would struggle with this time limit.
Bristol City Council’s head of housing options, Paul Sylvester, said: “We wrote to everybody to tell them that we’ve done that and if they wanted the application to be reinstated, they simply had to contact us and we would do that. We have done that in a number of cases.”
Social housing is much cheaper than renting privately or buying your own home.
However, the demand for social housing is much higher than the supply, leading to long waiting lists. People in bands three and four can sometimes wait for many years, with little hope of finding a home.
Removing thousands of people from the waiting list formed part of the housing department’s new IT project, which has been marred with technical issues.
This has included forcing current tenants to sign up with a separate, second email address to be able to bid on new properties.
Sylvester added: “Better management of the housing register is something that we should have been doing, but because of resource issues we haven’t.
“We shouldn’t have people on the housing register who no longer wish to be on there. It’s really important that as a city and a council, we’re clear on what our housing need is.”
Main photo: Martin Booth
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