Choice-based lettings can make tenants happier and help fill space in areas of low demand. Housing Today finds out how they work.
Choice – it's a basic freedom that we tend to take for granted in our democratic, consumer-driven society. We live in an age where the customer rules supreme.

But somewhere along the line, social tenants have been left out of the consumer equation and this has led the government to spend £13m on transforming social tenants into customers, in the hope of making them happier about their homes.

The crucial element to this is choice. Getting to choose where you live is a freedom that private renters and homebuyers take for granted but which has long been denied to social tenants.

Since the government's 2000 housing green paper announced an intention to give tenants more choice over where they live, it has given six-figure grant sums to 27 choice-based lettings pilot schemes in England, each scheme bringing together local authorities and housing associations.

This is choice-based letting. Most UK schemes involve simply advertising the properties that are available and allowing people to apply for whichever they choose, a Dutch system called the Delft model. Where more than one person applies for a property, the person who has been registered with the service for the longest gets the home.

Some UK schemes in areas of high demand, however, have had to refine the system, banding properties and then applying the "time principle".

Tenants on the receiving end of this process have no money with which to secure properties; their currency in the choice-based lettings process is time. The homeless, and others with high needs, are given temporary priority status, and have to apply for and accept a home within a certain timeframe.

In the short term they may not get their first choice of home but they can re-register on the service and begin the wait for the home they want. The other advantage is that a high-street presence can attract the attention of people who previously would not have thought of renting from the council, which can create demand in low-demand areas.

The government grants to pilot schemes have been spent on reinventing old allocation systems, turning them into estate agent-style operations complete with glossy high-profile marketing, customer-friendly branding and high-street stores. The Home Choice service began operating in Caerphilly two years ago, ahead of the current pilot programme. "When we surveyed people, they said that the points system was morally degrading because it forced you to drag up all the bad parts of your life in order to get the maximum points," says Angela Gascoigne, director of housing services at Charter Housing, the housing association behind Home Choice.

So is choice-based letting actually making social tenants feel more like customers? Dominic Conway, project manager of the Homes For You service in Bolton, says it is: "Social housing has traditionally been something that is done to people, but this is like any other form of tenure."

Choice in Bolton
Bolton's housing register has doubled in length since the metropolitan borough council and eight registered social landlord partners joined forces to launch the Homes For You service last October. More than 20,000 people have expressed interest in a home but, with just 2500 homes coming up for grabs since the launch date, many have been disappointed.

"A lot of customers have engaged in the process very well and it has been very successful in stimulating interest," says project manager Dominic Conway. "But there are people who are complaining because they are not getting a home." With as many as 90 people queuing up for one home, frustrations are inevitable and Conway is hoping that new measures to keep customers better informed will help manage their expectations of the service. "We are letting people know how many people apply for particular homes and how long the person at the top of the list had to wait, so that they can make more informed applications," he says.

Homes For You is a straightforward time-based system, running on the Delft model, with high-needs applicants given special status for three months. "There's an expectation that they would take a home within that time," says Conway. Homes For You has always had areas of both low and high demand within its territory and, like most other housing providers, it is finding small sheltered units hardest to let. "They are just not wanted by people who are coming out of a house. The kitchens aren't even big enough to get all the appliances into," says Conway. As a result, the service is looking at alternative uses for the accommodation.

Home details are advertised in the property section of local newspaper the Bolton Evening News every Wednesday and on posters in local housing offices, partner housing association offices, the town hall and the library. Direct mailshots are sent to organisations like Age Concern, and the scheme has a website, www.homesforyou.org.uk, and a store in the town centre.

We’ve fundamentally changed our relationship with our customers. The main lesson is to focus on the customer’s requirements

Angela Gascoigne, director of housing, Caerphilly

The town centre store is the base for the Homes For You team, and is very much like an estate agent, with staff processing enquiries and assembling home details at a rapid pace. Home details have to be prepared for the local newspaper's weekly publication deadlines and people have just one week in which to apply for a property.

The service opted not to invest in a new IT system to manage the new lettings service, and has instead made do with tweaking its existing management package. "In hindsight I would probably spend more time on the system," Conway admits. "Some of the information that we are getting out of the system is not as good as we would have liked, and the website is not integrated with the housing management system, so online applications have to be re-keyed into the management system."

Homes For You
Who's involved: Bolton MBC, plus housing associations Anchor Housing Trust, Ashiana HA, Collingwood HA, Irwell Valley HA, Manchester Methodist HA, NBH-Places for People Group, Portico HA and St Vincent's HA.
Area covered: the Bolton area of Greater Manchester, including all of the 22,000 council stock, plus 5000 housing association homes.
The money: The scheme won a £300,000 grant from the government under its pilot programme, much of which was put into an initial marketing push which included a local radio advertising campaign. The council already had the shop premises. The biggest expense is the £1500 spent every week on three pages of colour advertising in the Bolton Evening News.
Most enquiries for a single property: 90.

Mansfield moves ahead
You might think you have stumbled into the start of the January sales if you go to the Moveahead shop in central Mansfield on a Wednesday. That's when a new batch of homes is advertised in the shop window and in local newspaper The Chad. "It's bedlam in the shop," says Peter Brown, Moveahead project manager. "We're trying to get across to people that they don't have to come in here on the first day."

The shop opened in February and in its first three weeks nearly 2000 people visited – on one day, 240 people passed through the doors. The shop has proved extremely successful in generating enquiries from new tenants. The service covers areas of both high and low demand, and social housing providers have had to compete for business with the private sector where house prices are low. "The town-centre base has generated a new market for us. We've taken 1500 new registrations since February," says Brown. "The shop window has attracted people who wouldn't have thought of going to the council for a home."

Moveahead has its origins in a pilot project led by Leicester Housing Association, and involving Mansfield district council and Nottingham Community HA, which began just over two years ago. The larger-scale Moveahead service, involving the council and seven RSLs, was launched this year along with its popular shop. Homes are allocated on a waiting time basis, with high-needs applicants given a 28-day priority card.

Since February, 700 properties have been advertised, generating 6000 expressions of interest, and 17,500 people have come into the shop. "We've let nearly everything that we've advertised," says Brown. "We advertise 20-25 properties a week and we regularly get around 200 enquiries." Moveahead's people have been stretched by the initiative and its new culture, Brown says: "This is more resource-intensive, but staff find their work more fulfilling. They are not constantly saying 'no'."

Moveahead
Who's involved:
Mansfield District Council, with housing associations East Midlands HA, Derwent HA, the Guinness Trust, Leicester HA, Longhurst Housing Group, Metropolitan Housing Trust and Nottingham Community HA.
Area covered: the whole council area, with 8000 council properties and 1500 housing association homes.
The money: Moveahead won a grant of £296,000 from the government under its pilot programme. That covers around half the running cost for two years. The remainder of the funding comes from the partners. Shop rental costs around £12,500 a year.
Most enquiries for a single property: 85.

Communication in Caerphilly
Gwent-based housing association Charter Housing started its Home Choice service two years ago after director of housing services Angela Gascoigne read an article on the Delft model and thought it might provide the solution to the association's low-demand problems. "Once I found out more about it I realised it had nothing to do with low demand – it was about customer focus, and I thought that was actually much more interesting," she says.

Since then Charter has demonstrated that you don't have to have a great big grant, a shop, a website or marketing gimmicks to make choice-based letting work. "Our start-up budget is probably as much as the pilot schemes are spending on stamps," jokes Gascoigne. "Our scheme is so simple."

The service sticks to the basics of the Delft model: people registered with Home Choice are mailed once a fortnight with a list of properties, their details, information on who got homes last time round and a reply coupon. Doctors' surgeries, local authority area offices and a range of agencies also get details. "Our customers are not very interested in telephone or internet contact. They are happy with the postal service," says Gascoigne. Applications are assessed on the basis of time on the waiting list, with people in need having a three-month priority card.

The system has benefited a low-demand area in Caerphilly. Enquiries for the area have grown by 160%, and more people are registering for homes there than in a previous area of high demand. But it has not solved all of Caerphilly's problems. "There are properties that we have to readvertise," says Gascoigne – like elsewhere, bedsits and sheltered housing are particularly hard to let.

With Caerphilly tenants now well used to Home Choice, Gascoigne has found clear evidence of increased customer satisfaction. "Those difficult telephone conversations – in which tenants would ask 'when am I going to get housed?' – have stopped," she says. "People struggled to understand the points system, but now they understand the situation. We tend to be advising people on how to use the system to get the benefits that they want to see. We've fundamentally changed our relationship with our customers. The main lesson is that the customer should drive the service, we focus on the customer's requirements."

Advice from Dominic Conway

1 Get it right and you could generate a lot of interest. 2 It is worth putting effort into a robust IT system, because you are working to deadlines. 3 It won’t make unpopular areas popular – there are a lot more issues to resolve.