Northumberland Homefinder

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Prioritising Applications

 

Common Allocation Policy

The council and its partners have agreed a common allocation policy which means that the way houses are allocated will be the same throughout Northumberland.  All partners in the scheme will use the policy guidelines to assess housing need.  You can view Northumberland's Common Allocation Policy here.  

Priority Bands

Northumberland Homefinder uses a banding scheme to prioritise applications.  We must give priority to people who are in most housing need as we cannot let our homes on a first-come, first-served basis. 

We will assess your application and place it into one of 4 bands, the table below sets out the banding scheme and gives examples of those applicants who may be eligible to be placed in each band.

Band	Criteria	Examples
Band P	Urgent housing need	People who are deemed to be homeless.
Band 1	High housing need	People who have an illness, medical condition or disability which is affected by their current housing.
Band 2	Medium housing need	Applicants who are sharing facilities in their current home.
Band 3	No housing need	Applicants who want a like-for-like move or are currently adequately housed.

Our homes are in high demand, so we may place your application in a lower band if you:

• do not have a local connection with Northumberland

or

• you can afford to buy a home.

Band P applicants will only keep their priority status for 3 months and if you haven't bid for a home during this time, then you could lose this priority.  However if you are in band P and we agree that you are homeless, you will have only one month to bid for a home.  In either case, we will write to tell you when your priority time limit is coming to an end.