Your questions answered
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- What is Choice Based Lettings?
- What is a Band?
- How do you decide who gets priority?
- My home is being demolished. Can I bid for any home in any area?
- What if I am Homeless?
- Will you take my medical conditions into account?
- Will I get help with bidding?
- What if I have rent arrears or a history of anti social behaviour?
- Will you advertise all of your homes?
- What about homes for people with disabilities?
- What information will be shown on the adverts?
- Will I be offered the home if I am the first person to place a bid?
- How many bids can I place?
- Will I be told if my bid is unsuccessful?
- What if I am first for more than one home?
- Will my priority be removed for refusing an offer?
- Can I view a home I am offered before I decide to accept it?
- What if I don't agree with a decision you have made about my application?
Choice based lettings (or CBL) is a way to let council and housing association homes, as well as other housing options like private rented homes, swaps (mutual exchanges) and low cost home ownership. Our available homes are advertised and people who have an active housing application can express their interest in these properties by bidding for them. CBL is an open and transparent way of letting properties as you can actually see what is available and find out how previously advertised homes were let.
The band you are in will depend on your level of housing need, most people are placed in Band 4 when they first register. If you are later found to have a high or urgent need for housing, you may be moved to higher band depending on your circumstances. If your circumstances change, you should let us know as soon as you can because this could change the band you are placed in and the type of home you can have.
Our policy will tell you who we will give priority to for housing, to reflect what the law says about how our homes should be allocated. A quick guide to this can be found here.
Yes, you can bid for any home in any area, however, you will only have the highest priority on homes that are in the Council area that you live in now.
If you are homeless or at risk of losing your home, you should contact your local Council for advice and you may be given a priority for housing. If you are given a priority, you will need to bid on homes that meet the needs of you and your household. If you do not bid, your Council may contact you to find out why you are not bidding and you may lose your priority. Contact details for your council can be found here.
If you have told us about your medical conditions when you apply for housing, we may contact you to carry out a medical assessment to see if your conditions mean that you can be awarded a priority. We may also ask you to provide some supporting information from your GP, Occupational Therapist or other healthcare professional to help us with this.
Yes. Our staff can help to guide you through the process until you are able to do this for yourself. If you are particularly vulnerable and cannot access the service by visiting, telephoning or using the online service, we can arrange for your bids to be placed automatically.
If we think that your behaviour is serious enough for you not to be a suitable tenant, we may not allow you to register for rehousing with us. However, we will look at each case individually and always let you know our decision in writing as soon as we can.
We will advertise the majority of our available homes, but a small amount will be let directly in cases where emergency housing is needed, for example, where a tenant needs to be moved because of a fire. Where we let a property directly, it will be highlighted in our recent lets.
Our adverts will tell you if the property has any special adaptations and we will give priority to people who have an assessed need for these features.
We try our best to make sure that the information we put on our adverts is as accurate as possible and can help you decide whether it is right for you. We will include;
- The area that the property is in
- The type of property (e.g. House, Flat, Bungalow)
- The number of bedrooms it has
- The rent and any other charges
- The name of the landlord
- Information about any special features (e.g. adaptations such as level access shower)
- Where possible, a photograph
Not neccessarily. The time and day you place your bid will make no difference to your end position on a shortlist for a property as we sort these by Band, priority date and date of registration. Please be aware some properties may have a Local Lettings Policy in place which will define who gets preference.
You can place bids on as many properties as you like that meet the needs of your household. There are also no limits to the amount of bids you can make on Private Rented or swap properties.
No. Because of the number of people who are bidding on properties every week, we cannot contact all bidders. We will only contact successful applicants with offers.
We will contact you and ask you which property you would prefer to take. The others would then be offered to the next person on ths list.
If you are in Band 1, 2 or 3, you may have your priority removed if you refuse an offer of a property that meets your needs for what we would see as an 'unreasonable' reason. If this happens, you will be placed into Band 4 for 6 months and then you would need to approach us again for an assessment. We will look at each case on its merits and inform you of any decision we make in writing.
Yes, we encourage you to view a property before you decide whether you want to accept an offer. Sometimes, we may invite more than one person to view a property, but we will always give priority to the person who is higher on the list. We usually give you 2 working days to decide whether you want to accept the property, but in some cases, we may allow you a little more time.
You can ask us to review a decision we make about your application by writing to the partner who holds your application.