Twelve consortia of local authorities and housing associations were given £1.3 million in second round funding to develop sub-regional choice based lettings (CBL) schemes to offer new and existing social housing tenants greater mobility, choice, and flexibility over their housing.
The funding will ensure a further 49 councils adopt a choice based lettings approach and bring the number of local authorities with CBL to over 200.
Housing Minister Baroness Andrews said: "The popularity of choice-based lettings is continuing to grow across the country. Not only are we continuing to see an interest from social landlords in the south east, south west and east of England, but this year we have also seen increased interest in the midlands, the north east and north west of the country."
The Minister added that the Government was also providing £760,000 over two years to develop a pan-London choice and mobility scheme through the London Capital Moves partnership of London boroughs, housing associations, the Greater London Authority, the Housing Corporation, London councils and the London Housing Federation.
"This will be the first truly regional CBL scheme, providing for greater mobility across London. As a starting point, London boroughs and London housing associations will pool a proportion of their lettings for people seeking a move across borough boundaries; and the scheme will signpost home-seekers to other housing options, such as the private rented sector and low cost home ownership. The scheme will also include an integrated London-wide Accessible Housing Register."
The successful sub-regional schemes are:
The Communities and Local Government's 5 year housing plan, Sustainable Communities: Homes for All, published on 24 January 2005, set out the Government's plans for taking forward its choice based lettings policy. The aim is to have in place choice nationwide by 2010.
The Government wants to build on the existing Department's target - for all local authorities to have adopted CBL by 2010 - by extending choice based lettings to cover not only local authority and RSL properties, but also shared ownership, low cost home ownership, and properties to rent from private landlords.
The Government also wants to develop choice-based lettings schemes on a regional and/or sub-regional basis, recognising that housing markets do not follow local authority boundaries.
Sub-regional CBL brings together a number of local authorities and housing associations in schemes that cross local authority boundaries. It is argued that there are a number of benefits from larger, cross-local authority, schemes:
They bring together a larger pool of available housing, giving tenants more choice and helping to ease localised problems of high demand.
