All properties advertised belong to our housing partners (the Council does not own any of the properties advertised on this site) and as such our housing partners will make the decision to who will be offered a particular property in line with the Homeseeker Policy and their procedures and practices.
All bids and expressions of interest received will be subject to a number of processes prior to the landlord drawing off a shortlist of applicants for consideration, this includes
You will only be considered for a property that meets your housing eligibility as advertised against each property.
Bands will be clearly identified for you to make an informed choice i.e. Platinum, Gold Band and Homeless, etc..
If you miss the cut off times for the various forms of bidding, your application will not be allowed and will be discounted. These times are :
Website and Automated telephone bidding - 23.59pm each Tuesday following the Thursday advert
Email - 2pm on each Tuesday following the Thursday advert
Paper coupon - 2pm on each Tuesday following the Thursday advert
Following the closure of the advert, eligible bids will be ranked against each property in the following order:
By priority preference band
The date priority was awarded (Gold Band and Homeless only)
By effective registration date i.e. How long you have been waiting in that band
Shortlist of eligible applicants.
If your name is at the top of the shortlist you will normally be invited to view the property unless there are reasons why we are unable to do this. The landlord of the property may want to carry out any outstanding eligibility checks, e.g. rent checks, household circumstance checks or you have rent arrears owed to the partner landlords and they are taking legal action against you for breaching a tenancy condition.
If you are in Gold Band and Homeless (and eligible for the property) you will be ranked in order of the date you were awarded priority and this may differ from the information you received from our automated services. However to remain fair it is normal for us to consider the person holding priority the longest first.
If we are unable to offer the property to the applicant at the top of the list we will move to the next applicant and so on and these will be recorded for audit purposes.
If you decide to refuse the property it will be offered to the next person on the shortlist. If you refuse 2 reasonable and suitable offers of accommodation, your application may be downgraded to a lower priority band.
If you are offered a property you will not be short listed for other properties until you have decided to either accept or refuse the offer. If you accept the property you will be advised by the letting landlord of the process you must follow.