Social tenants get more choice

Citation

(2001), "Social tenants get more choice", Property Management, Vol. 19 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/pm.2001.11319aab.027

Social tenants get more choice

Social tenants get more choice

All local authorities in England are today invited to bid for a place on a pilot scheme, which will test different lettings approaches aimed at giving new and existing social tenants greater choice over their housing.

It is envisaged that 10-20 pilots will be supported under the scheme, though the final number will depend on the scope and quality of the bids received. The pilots will run for up to two years from April 2001 with £11 million being made available over three years to support and evaluate the scheme.

Launching the pilot scheme, Housing Minister, Nick Raynsford, said:

We want to carefully test the ideas for extending choice, across a broad range of situations and a variety of approaches.

We will be looking out for bids, which include one or more of the following: innovative use of information technology, including the Internet; original marketing and advertising schemes; tackling the problem of empty and unpopular property and under-occupation; practical and concrete ideas for housing advice services which support vulnerable, difficult and excluded groups; local lettings policies; and schemes which are sensitive to black and ethnic minority issues. And in particular, we want to include at least one scheme which brings together a number of local authorities to test cross-border lettings systems.

We are keen to promote greater movement across local authority boundaries, in this way helping to ease the demand in areas of the country where housing pressure is high. We want to give social housing tenants the opportunity to move to a particular location for example, to find a new job or take care of an elderly relative.

We are encouraging local authorities to take a partnership approach, involving stakeholders in their area in developing their ideas and putting them into practice. And in particular we want them to involve RSLs who may well be the main, and in some cases the only, provider of social housing in the area.

The pilot scheme will be rigorously monitored and evaluated. Researchers will be appointed to work alongside the pilot authorities to make sure that the achievements are recognized.

A regular newsletter will report on the pilots' progress. Lessons learnt from the pilot scheme will form the basis of good practice guidance for social landlords.

The idea to test choice-based approaches to lettings with pilot schemes was originally proposed in the Housing Green Paper "Quality and choice: a decent home for all", published in April 2000. It has received wide support from respondents to the Green Paper.

Table IV Timetable

As part of Spending Review 2000 it was announced that £11 million would be made available to support and evaluate pilot schemes, which test choice-based lettings policies and involve local authorities and registered social landlords.

The money will be available over a three-year period: £6 million in 2001/2, £4 million in 2002/3, and £1 million in 2003/4.

Researchers will be commissioned to monitor and evaluate the selected pilots and produce good practice guidance drawing from the lessons learnt. The research and evaluation will be paid for out of the £11 million budget.

The proposed timetable is shown in Table IV.

A copy of the bidding guidance will be available on our Web site.