Letting our homes

We provide a range of affordable homes for rent for families, couples, single people and those aged 55 and above.

Customers for our homes are selected by the local council, usually through a choice-based lettings scheme where they ‘bid’ for homes that are available. If successful that’s where we come in and aim to make the process of moving into one of our homes as simple as possible.

Though we were restricted in letting homes at certain times this year because of social distancing measures, we were able to switch to offering virtual viewings and digital sign-ups as soon as we could to ensure we could continue to help as many people as possible. Our teams worked closely with new customers to understand their individual situations and the impact the pandemic was having on them personally and their need to move.

It’s always our intention to re-let our homes to people who need them as quickly as possible, but we do need to take the time to ensure our homes meet the standards we expect, and our customers deserve. Occasionally there may be a delay and of course, this year there was an additional impact of COVID-19. It therefore isn’t surprising that these disruptions impacted our normal lettings performance compared to previous years.

The amount of rent and service charges lost due to empty properties this year was £1,195,295 - 0.84% against our target of 0.76%.

The feedback we received on our virtual viewings and digital sign-up process has been really positive, and we’ll be keeping them as options moving forward.