Are you eligible?
Before you apply for a council or housing association home you must first check if you meet the right criteria and then submit an application to join the housing register.
We would recommend you read a Summary of our Housing Allocation Policy to see if you qualify before making a housing application.
From July 2016, Havering Council changed the way that it allocates housing.
These changes were made because of the limited supply of housing available to meet the needs of our residents. The new policy will be applied to all applicants who have already been assessed under the Housing Allocations Scheme, to those waiting to be assessed and to all future applicants.
The changes are:
- extending the residency criteria to 6 years
- excluding people with financial means of over £36,000 as they can resolve their own housing situation
- excluding people who have been involved in unacceptable behaviour, serious enough to make them unsuitable tenants
- restricting the housing register to applicants who can demonstrate a housing need
- revised priority banding system into 5 bands
- continuing to operate a Choice Based Lettings system by advertising properties through East London Lettings Company but made some changes in order to improve transparency
- introduced a one offer only policy
- introduced monitoring of property bidding activity
- introduced an annual review of applications
- introduced an eligibility criteria for sheltered housing