Housing for Northamptonshire veterans and care-leavers prioritised

Families with at least one dependent child sharing with others, will move down a band

Veterans and care-leavers will be given priority in a new allocation scheme for social housing.

West Northamptonshire Council (WNC) said victims of domestic violence will also benefit from the revised rules.

The scheme will harmonise the way housing is allocated across the whole of the West Northamptonshire area.

The system will make it more difficult for people who have not been in the area for very long to get housed by the council.

At the moment, there are more than four thousand applicants on three different housing allocation schemes across West Northamptonshire, covering Daventry, Northampton and South Northamptonshire.

Written after a public consultation, the new scheme sets out who is eligible for social rented housing, who will get priority and how properties will be allocated across the whole area.

Prospective tenants will still be put into four bands, depending on which priority group they belong to. Band A is for people whose housing need is exceptional and they need to move immediately.

In the original scheme, members of the armed forces were placed in band B along with care leavers. Following the consultation, both have been moved up to band A.

Families with at least one dependent child sharing with others were proposed to be in band B but will move down to band C.

Local residency

One of the biggest changes will be the amount of time an applicant must have lived in an area before becoming eligible for council housing.

Under the old scheme, someone in Daventry could qualify for social housing if they had lived in the area for at least a year and South Northamptonshire applicants only needed to demonstrate that they have lived there for six months.

The new scheme requires an applicant to have lived in the WNC area for at least two years, although victims of domestic abuse are exempt from this rule.

WNC's Adam Brown said the changes would ensure a fairer and more efficient service

The new allocations system was approved by WNC's cabinet.

Adam Brown, WNC's cabinet member for housing, said: "By harmonising the existing policies we can ensure a fairer and more efficient service for people across the whole West Northants area and use our resources as effectively as possible to improve life chances for residents and continue to make West Northants a great place to live, work, visit and thrive."