onthemove

If you are successful in qualifying for inclusion on our housing register, you are not guaranteed an offer of social housing. This is because demand far outweighs supply.

Several factors influence whether a household receives social housing and if so, how long they were waiting before receiving an offer. These factors include:

• supply of newbuild and existing social housing (i.e. re-lets),
• size of property required,
• preferences or needs regarding location and property type (i.e. tower-block flats, houses, bungalows, adapted/non-adapted, ground floor, with/without a garden),
• whether they are interested in and/or meet the age criteria for living in sheltered (older persons) housing – which is less popular. (Those in lower bands are more likely to be housed if they will consider sheltered housing).
• whether they have a pet/the pet criteria of the housing they are interested in
• the frequency with which the applicant is placing bids/expressing an interest in available social housing.

Of those housed, the median waiting time for allocations in 2022/23, along with the number of properties allocated are shown below:

Details regarding allocated properties, including the band of the successful applicant, their effective date, the number of bidders and a photograph of the property can be found by clicking ‘Properties and search recent lets’ -> ‘Recent Lets’: Search properties - onthemove (southend-on-the-move.org.uk).