Review of Bedford's social housing allocation policy delayed by Cleat Hill explosion response

Anna Robbani, the council’s head of housing, homelessness and customer services, told the Housing Committee (Wednesday, March 12) that it was originally scheduled for completion by April 2025.

“Unfortunately with Cleat Hill taking the housing service team out of business as usual action for three months, and with January through to March recovering from that, there has been a six month delay,” she said.

“We are going to start the allocation review policy in April 2025 with a view to completing it by Christmas.”

Ms Robbani said the core principles of the allocation policy—such as priority banding, waiting times, and the choice-based lettings system—will remain in place.

“But there’s an opportunity, through consultation with partners and the public, to look at whether there are elements within that that we tweak,” she said.

The committee heard that 50-60 properties were advertised per month, but this has fallen to just 20-30 per month.

“[This] could be because of expenses associated with uplifting standards, which means that properties are less available because they’re doing work on the properties,” Ms Robbani said.

“It could be a slow down because of the cost of people moving on from those properties – it could be a whole mixture of reasons.

“But that does need exploring and it is really impacting our ability to move claimants on. So there is certainly a bottle-necking of supply.”

The council has 2,500 active applicants on the register, with 600-700 applicants pending assessment.

Ms Robbani said: “So you are talking 3,500 households in need, and depending on the outcome of those assessments. So it’s a huge demand and a very limited supply.

“It’s worth saying we have about 1,500 open homeless [cases] at the moment, of which 900 are in temporary accommodation,” she added.

To tackle the issue, the council plans to strengthen partnerships with local housing associations and establish a new Housing Association Forum to discuss supply issues.

It will also explore renegotiating nomination agreements, which currently require associations to allocate only a percentage of their properties through the housing register.

“We do have an opportunity by increasing the partnership working over the next few months to review some of those nomination agreements and see whether we can increase the lets that are given through the register,” Ms Robbani said.

“At the moment we advertise properties on a quota basis for homeless, general needs and transfer.

“We have recently, as a short-term intervention in partnership with some providers, increased the quota to homeless category customers.

“But it’s wise to make that a short-term intervention. Otherwise you’re hindering that movement in general needs which can also hinder supplies.

“It’s quite a difficult balancing act,” she said.