Housing and Homelessness Summary Year end 2020-21

Colchester holds a housing register of people interested in Council or Registered Provider homes. Households eligible to join the register are assessed according to need and ‘banded’ as to their priority for rehousing. There are five bands (Bands A - E), depending on the assessed level of housing need.

Not everyone on the housing register will be offered a property. Last year (April 2020 – March 2021) there were only 474 lets of affordable housing compared to 3,000 households on the register.
 

Households on the register according to band

Gateway to Homechoice, 31 March 2021
 

Households on the register according to number of bedrooms required

Gateway to Homechoice, 31 March 2021
 

Lettings of affordable housing

Affordable housing includes both Council owned and Registered Provider homes. The table below shows the number of properties let during 2020 – 2021.
 

Source: Gateway to Homechoice

Registered Providers of social housing are independent societies, bodies of trustees or companies established for the purpose of providing low-cost social housing for people in housing need on a non-profit-making basis. They are also known as ‘housing associations’.

The table below shows the total number of Colchester applicants who were housed via Gateway to Homechoice. The total is different to the that in the table above as some of the direct and transfer applicants were housed outside Colchester.
 

Source: Gateway to Homechoice

Please note this does not include households who have moved through mutual exchange. This is where an existing Council or Registered Provider tenant ‘swaps’ their home with another tenant.