Thousands on list for social housing in Perth and Kinross as councillor brands situation 'disappointing'

Around 3000 people in Perth and Kinross are currently waiting on social housing, the Perthshire Advertiser can reveal.

But almost half of those on the list are -following assessment - deemed to be “adequately housed” in their current accommodation and “unlikely” to ever be offered a home.

The figures were shared with the Perthshire Advertiser by Councillor Alasdair Bailey, who is calling for more good quality social housing close to people’s work.

At the September 8 Perth and Kinross Council housing and communities committee Cllr Bailey, who represents Labour in the Carse of Gowrie, asked council officers how many people were currently on the local housing waiting list.

In a written response, officers said the Common Housing Register (CHR) provides a single point of access to most of the social housing providers in the area: Perth and Kinross Council, Caledonia, Hillcrest, Fairfield Housing Cooperative and Kingdom Housing Association.

A points-based system is used to allocate applicants into one of four groups: homeless, strategic need, transfers (from current tenancy with one of the Common Housing Register partners) and applicants (for all other applicants who do not fit into any of the other three groups).

In its response PKC listed the most common reasons for awarding points as “overcrowding, under-occupation, medical needs or insecure housing”.

Homeless and strategic need applicants are ranked on the waiting list chronologically with the oldest applications near the top of the list.

Transfers and applicants groups could potentially be on the waiting list forever. Under the terms of the assessments criteria they do not receive points for waiting time “so if an applicant has an application on the CHR for 10 years and a new applicant goes onto the waiting list with more points, based on their housing need, they will be ahead of the longer-standing applicant on the waiting list”.

As of September 13, there were 2997 people on the Perth and Kinross Common Housing Register.

Almost 56 per cent of the unique applicants - 1675 - have been deemed to have some level of assessed housing need.

On average applicants choose between seven and eight different areas of Perth and Kinross to live in with Perth being the most popular.

The greatest demand is for two-bedroom properties.

Cllr Bailey said he found the results “disappointing”.

He added: “Good quality housing close to where a person needs it for work should be a right and not a privilege reserved for the fortunate few.

“Housing need includes a number of things; people who are coming out of the armed forces or hospital or are at risk in their current home, or who have been in the care system and are now old enough to have a place of their own.

“There are almost as many people again sitting behind these groups who are asking us for a council house, primarily because the council is a good provider of homes at reasonable cost in a market where buying is an unrealistic prospect for many.

“I would like to see the council and other bodies such as housing associations provide more housing to enable more people to benefit from living in good quality homes near to where they need to for work.”