Choice-based letting is supposed to let tenants browse estate agent-style details and give them more control over the homes they get. But so far, the scheme's greatest claim to fame is making people realise precisely what little choice they've got.
You're a social housing tenant unhappy with your current home. Would you rather: a) get on a waiting list for your ideal property, even if the wait could last years; b) keep trying to persuade your housing officer you're in priority need and should move up the queue; c) move to an area nobody else wants to live in to get a better home or d) assess the options and get used to your current place?

If you answered "c" or "d", congratulations – you could be the next satisfied customer of a choice-based lettings scheme. However, many tenants are finding the scheme, which is supposed to offer them choice over the home they live in, isn't quite what it was cracked up to be.

In 2001, when the government invested £13m in 27 pilot schemes for social housing, the very New Labour phrase "choice-based lettings" heralded freedom and flexibility. And in February this year an ODPM report praised these schemes for bringing openness to the allocations system and reducing re-let times.

Choice-based letting apes private estate agencies by letting tenants browse details of homes available on a weekly or fortnightly basis. Rather than the system of council waiting lists, which allocate tenants points according to their need and penalise them if they reject what they're offered, choice-based letting requires them to bid for the properties they want. Administered through offices, magazines or websites, the idea is to slash rejection rates, save time and resources and give tenants a feeling of control.

But anecdotal evidence shows that tenants often become disillusioned when they find the system does not offer the degree of choice they had hoped for.

The most significant result of the choice-based lettings pilots has been to highlight just how limited many tenants' choices are; usually because of the stock available. Steve Chalcraft is group manager for housing at Hounslow council, which takes part in west London's Locata scheme with four other boroughs. This grades tenants into four priority bands, with the top two representing the most urgent cases such as homeless and overcrowded people. A property is given to the bidder who is in the highest band and has been waiting longest.

Chalcraft admits that with up to 300 bids per property, people in the lowest band – those with no officially recognised need to move – are likely to continue to be overlooked.

"Nobody in band D is ever likely to get an offer in London and the scheme would be a disaster if they did because we have so many people in priority need," he says.

As more and more tenants realise they have little more chance of moving to their dream home than they had before, frustration with a system that encourages them to bid week after week can mount.

Maggie Challoner, housing assessment manager for Hillingdon council, which also takes part in Locata, says: "Some people started off bidding enthusiastically and tailed off. As in the old days, there's always more interest than property available."

Challoner says those people judged to be in "medium" priority are most likely to be disillusioned. "These people wouldn't have got housed under the old scheme, but they didn't know that then. They just wouldn't have heard anything from us," she says. "But they wouldn't have had their hopes raised and dashed either."

It seems the real advantage of the new system is not so much additional choice but laying bare the allocations process. "In general, choice-based lettings schemes seem to be more transparent. The central thing is that it's in the hands of the applicant rather than the officer," says Rich Warrington, policy officer for the Tenant Participation Advisory Service.

At Hounslow council, Chalcraft puts it more bluntly: "Let's be brutally honest: in London, nobody in the equivalent of band D got a look-in anyway before. If people look at Locata, they can now see what's available and the demand. The idea is to bring realism to the system which never existed before."

Success in the North
Choice-based lettings have been more successful in northern areas where there are pockets of low demand and houses to fill. Naser Patel, housing allocation policy and marketing manager for Bradford Community Housing Trust, says Bradford's Homehunter scheme gets about 10 bids per property every fortnight and that even non-urgent applications get a property within about three months. "After the first year, 70% of customers said it was a much better system because they can choose where they wanted to go," he says.

The Bradford trust has seen the number of people on its waiting list grow from 4683 to 21,714 since the Homehunter pilot began, while Bolton has seen total social housing applications rise from 7700 in 2001 to 18,500 people since the choice-based letting scheme started. In both areas the similarity to high-street estate agents has attracted people who don't realise it's social housing at first and enabled Homehunter to fill many of its smaller properties with young, single people, Patel says.

Meanwhile, for black and minority-ethnic communities, giving people a freer choice has challenged many of the assumptions that staff might have made.

Whereas previously, housing officers decided whether to offer homes in certain areas to BME people, Patel says giving tenants the power to choose for themselves has had unexpected results. "We've started seeing people moving to areas not normally deemed appropriate for them because they're further away from services like places of worship, Halal butchers and community centres."

Even in the North, though, choice can be limited in the most popular areas. Dominic Conway, access manager for Bolton Community Homes, says: "In certain parts of the borough one house becomes empty every 12 months, so it would take someone years to get rehoused in that area."

But choice-based lettings can give some people a stab at moving that they never had before, either by bidding for a property no one else bids for or by simply hanging on long enough. Frank Fletcher, chair of the Bolton Affiliation of Tenants and Residents Associations, says: "Take Horwich, which is a very nice area. Under the old system, I could never meet the criteria to apply for a house there because it's not my area. I would have to justify why I wanted to move there. Now, I might still not be classed as a priority but if I'm prepared to wait I could end up with a property in Horwich."

But the bottom line is, under choice-based letting tenants can still only choose from the properties that become available and underlying problems such as meeting decent homes targets or dealing with high demand remain. The hope that choice-based lettings initially offered tenants has been replaced, for many, by a hefty dose of realism.

After all, if a tenant is so desperate to move that they will take a property no one else wants, what sort of choice is that?

Even more choice

In January the ODPM appointed IT company Scout Solutions to set up the Housing Employment and Mobility Service (HEMS). HEMS will help social housing tenants to find new homes in other parts of the UK, and include a national website of available housing and job opportunities likely to be along choice-based lettings lines. HEMS will replace LAWN, the Association of London Government scheme that helps tenants move out of the capital to areas of lower housing demand, and HOMES, which helps people move closer to jobs or to relatives who need support. The new service will take over next January or February. An ODPM spokesperson said: “Tenants will be able to go to a one-stop shop such as the Jobcentre and find out where there are housing and employment opportunities and receive help for them to move.”