Vale of White Horse District Council
Abbey House, Abbey Close,
Abingdon, OX14 3JE
Email: comments@whitehorsedc.gov.uk
Telephone: 01235 520202

Vale of White Horse District Council

Choice Based Lettings

Social housing is allocated through the Choice Based Lettings scheme. This scheme enables Housing Register applicants to find a new home and to have more of say in where they live in the Vale.

Once an application for housing is accepted and registered, the Council places all applications for housing into one of six bands. These bands are designed to reflect the urgency of an applicant’s needs for housing: 

Priority within each band is determined by the date on which the application was made. This ensures that people who have been on the Register the longest have greater priority than new applicants.

Housing association properties that become available are advertised over a two week period, during which time Housing Register applicants can place bids for properties that fall within their band. The Council then produces a list of bidders for each property, where all interested bidders will appear in order of the date of their application. This list is forwarded to the relevant housing association, which then make a formal offer by letter.

The principles of the Choice Based Lettings scheme:

• Unrestricted choice is offered to Housing Register applicants, except where an applicant has been accepted as statutory homeless where there is a time limit on their choice
• Applicants can bid for properties in which they are interested.

Some housing association properties are used as temporary accommodation for homeless households to which the Council owes a duty under the provisions of the Homelessness Act 2002. Allocations to these properties are also made outside the scope of the Choice Based Lettings allocation process.

For more details about the allocation of housing through Choice Based Lettings see How to bid for a property and How bids are assessed and offers of acommodation made.