Issue - meetings

Report of the Cabinet Member Housing and Safety

RESOLVED THAT

the proposed changes to Gloucestershire Homeseeker’s Allocations Policy be approved and to keep the situation under review.

The Cabinet Member Housing and Safety introduced the report and outlined the changes to the scheme in light of Welfare Reform and the increased flexibilities arising from the Localism Act. These concerned aligning the Allocations Scheme’s bedroom entitlement criteria with the new Housing Benefit bedroom entitlement criteria for social housing tenants and to award additional preference and local connection to ex-members of the Armed Forces and their family members. Section 2.3 of the report and the Banding Matrix in Appendix 2 detailed additional changes which the council now wished to implement.

He highlighted that the impact of the scheme would be monitored by the Housing and Support Forum and the Access and Inclusion Group with operational issues being fed into the Gloucestershire Homeseeker’s Operational Group; and strategic issues considered by the Gloucestershire Homeseeker’s Management Board. It was important that this should be kept under review and this was proposed as an amendment to the resolution laid down in the report.

RESOLVED THAT

the proposed changes to Gloucestershire Homeseeker’s Allocations Policy be approved and to keep the situation under review.