Social Housing Allocations in Scotland: A Practice Guide

Published by The Scottish Government, February 2019 | Presented by Tenants Together Scotland

Contents

Social Housing Allocations in Scotland

A Practice Guide — February 2019

Thanks	07
1. About this Guide	08
1.1 Who the Guide is for	09
1.2 Background	09
1.3 Contributors	09
1.4 Purpose of the Guide	10
2. The Allocations Framework	11
2.1 Legislative framework	12
2.2 Statutory guidance	13
2.3 Scottish Social Housing Charter	15
2.4 Equality and human rights	17
Equality Act 2010 and the Public Sector Equality Duty	17
Human Rights	19
3. Allocation Policies	20
3.1 Reviewing or developing a policy	21
3.2 Who to involve in a review	22
Involving tenants, applicants and Registered Tenant Organisations	22
Others to involve in a review	23
The consultation process	24
Reporting on the review	25
3.3 What a review will cover	26
3.4 Allocation policy content	27
3.5 Equality Impact Assessment	28
3.6 Monitoring	29
4. Reasonable Preference	31
4.1 Reasonable preference groups	32
4.2 Unmet housing need	33
4.3 Homeless persons and persons threatened with homelessness and who have unmet housing needs	35
4.4 People who are living under unsatisfactory housing conditions and who have unmet housing needs	36
4.5 Under-occupation	37
4.6 Relative weighting to different groups	38
4.7 Applicants other than those with reasonable preference	38
5. Unsatisfactory Housing Conditions and Other Possible Needs Groups	39
5.1 Property condition	40
5.2 Overcrowding	41
5.3 Domestic abuse	43
5.4 Other abuse or harassment, including antisocial behaviour	46
5.5 Insecure accommodation (other than statutorily homeless)	47
5.6 Social, community or family support	48
5.7 Being/having been looked after by the care system	49
5.8 Kinship carers, foster carers and those adopting	51
5.9 People leaving the armed forces	52
6. Need for an Adapted or Accessible Property	55
6.1 The case for and nature of priority	56
6.2 Assessing need for an adapted or accessible property	57
6.3 Collaborative approaches to meeting needs for an adapted or accessible property	59
7. Other Requirements to be Considered in Allocations	62
7.1 Factors which should not be taken into account	63
7.2 Role of councillors and RSL management committees	66
7.3 Allocations to staff or family members	67
8. Heritable Property	68
8.1 Legislation relating to heritable property	69
8.2 Deciding to take heritable property into account	70
9. Access and Eligibility	73
9.1 Housing lists	74
9.2 Eligibility for housing	75
10. Approaches to Allocating Properties	76
10.1 Routes into housing	77
10.2 Allocations approaches	78
10.3 Common Housing Registers	83
10.4 Approach to giving reasonable preference to statutorily homeless applicants	84
10.5 Quotas and targets	86
10.6 Nomination agreements	87
10.7 Protocols	87
Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements	89
10.8 Making the best use of housing stock	90
10.9 Limiting the number of offers made	92
10.10 Exceptional circumstances and using discretion	93
10.11 Sensitive allocations	94
10.12 Taking local need into account	95
10.13 Letting low demand properties	97
10.14 Appeals and complaints	98
11. Providing Information and Advice	101
11.1 Key information requirements	102
11.2 Housing options and prospects advice	103
11.3 Housing health checks	105
11.4 An inclusive approach to providing information and advice	106
11.5 Keeping applicants informed	108
12. Managing a Housing List	110
12.1 Holding information on applicants	111
12.2 Application stage	112
12.3 Verification	113
12.4 References	114
12.5 Reviews	114
12.6 Cancellations and reinstating applications	115
13. Suspending, Bypassing and Deferring	116
13.1 Definitions	117
13.2 Non-statutory or statutory suspensions	118
13.3 Statutory homelessness and suspensions	119
13.4 Circumstances where a landlord may not impose a suspension	119
13.5 Possible reasons for suspension	120
13.6 Length of suspensions	124
13.7 Reasonable period to look back	125
13.8 Approach to suspending	126
13.9 Monitoring suspensions	128
14. Setting up and Creating Sustainable Tenancies	129
14.1 Tenancy start	130
14.2 Supporting tenants to sustain their tenancy	132

Thanks

We would like to thank everyone who has helped with the production of these materials including the members of our Project Advisory Group, everyone who submitted a practice example and all those who commented on the draft materials. Our particular thanks go Anne Cook at the Scottish Government for all her support as well as her contributions to editing and content.

Lucy Robertson and Marian Reid, Craigforth
Ashley Campbell, CIH Scotland
Susan McDonald Addleshaw Goddard LLP

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