Housing Options Service

What is the Housing Options Service?

The Housing Options Service (HOS), located at 101 Orchardson Street, is the place to go for housing advice, homelessness prevention and housing applications.

We administer the Housing Register and Choice Based Lettings scheme and provide temporary accommodation for homeless people.

Thousands of people apply for Council and housing association housing every year. Most will not be offered a place to live. If we can't offer you a home, we may still be able to help with your housing problem.

Our new Allocations Scheme has now been published. This sets out the groups of applicants we register and their level of priority.  

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HOS online

These pages will help you find information about the housing options that might be available to you. There is a lot of information here and we don't want you to get lost. So, we have created an easy-to-use site map to help you find your way around the HOS pages.

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Expected wait for a home

Westminster has a severe shortage of affordable housing - demand far exceeds supply. Even when someone does qualify for housing, they usually wait for many years before they get a property.

We recently worked out that if we closed the lists to all new applicants today and continued to let homes at the current rate, it would take us many years to house everyone already on the list.

Studio - 3 years 1 month

1 bed - 2 years 5 months

2 bedroom - 6 years 8 months

3 bedroom - 8 years 5 months

4 bedroom - 12 years 5 months

5+ bedroom - 9 years 4 months

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Reality check

In reality, we cannot close our waiting lists to new applicants. We are adding people on every day and the lists are growing.

Service users have told us that if they had realised how long the wait for permanent housing would be, they would have been more willing to consider other options when they first applied.

We are working very hard to increase the supply of housing available, but there are simply not enough council and housing association properties to go around. So, we will always suggest alternative housing options that may resolve your housing problem more quickly.

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Report housing fraud

Help us prosecute fraudsters - how to report a fraud if you suspect someone is claiming housing when they shouldn't be.