Test Valley Borough Council - Scheme of Allocation

Test Valley Borough Council is required to establish an allocation scheme for determining priorities between people who apply for housing and setting out the procedure to be followed in allocating housing accommodation.

An allocation is defined as occurring when a local housing authority selects a person to be its own secure or introductory tenant, nominates a person to be a secure or introductory tenant elsewhere, or nominates a person to be an assured tenant of another social landlord.  The selection or nomination of a person for the initial grant of a 'flexible' or 'affordable' tenancy of social housing will also be an 'allocation' because those are simply variants of secure or assured tenancies.

The Scheme of Allocation details all aspects of the allocation process, including the responsibility for decisions, policy on offering choice to applicants, how applications will be assessed, processed and how decisions will be made with regard to the allocation of social housing in the borough of Test Valley.

The Council operates a choice based lettings scheme in partnership with Havant Borough, Winchester City , Eastleigh Borough and East Hampshire District Councils (together forming a 'Sub-Regional Area' for the purposes of housing allocation), and consists of a Common Allocation Framework (known as Hampshire Home Choice  Allocation Framework) agreed between these authorities, with individual schemes of allocation prepared by each participating authority in accordance with that Framework.  The Hampshire Home Choice Allocation Framework is available to download at the foot of this page.

The Council's scheme of allocation and Hampshire Home Choice (HHC) Sub-Regional Allocation Framework ensures applicants are given 'reasonable preference' in accordance with legislation.   This includes the following customers:

  • Applicants who are owed the Prevention and Relief duty under the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017.
  • Applicants who are owed the Prevention or Relief duty under the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 or who have been accepted  under Part 7 of the Housing Act 1996 (as amended by the Homelessness Act 2002) and owed a full duty to house under the homeless legislation.  
  • People occupying insanitary or overcrowded housing or otherwise living in unsatisfactory housing conditions.
  • People who need to move on medical or welfare grounds.
  • People who need to move to a particular locality in the district of the housing authority, where failure to meet that need would cause hardship (to themselves or to others).

For further information on the Test Valley Borough Council's Scheme of Allocation, just click on the document on this page.