Choice Based Letting housing applicants are in 'a lonely place'

There are growing concerns that Choice-Based Letting (CBL) applicants are not being informed when properties have been allocated.

Choice-based letting is a council system that allows people on the housing list to choose properties from a list of available homes.

The prospective tenants register their interest, and the council decides who needs the property the most, based on a set of criteria.

However, applicants do not get notified through the CBL system if the property they have applied for has been allocated to another applicant.

Councillors Catherine Burke and John O’Leary raised the issue last week, saying that the lack of communication causes 'anxiety' for applicants.

Cllr O’Leary said: “Is there a move for applicants to get replied to? Because I think it’s very frustrating and it’s a very lonely place to be for somebody who applied through CBL for housing and they are not going to know if the house has been allocated. It causes a lot of anxiety and concern for applicants."

Cllr Catherine Burke added: “We’re hearing from people day in day out who are really suffering from anxiety about where they’re going to live, where their children are going to sleep, whether the housing is going to be allocated or not."

“The Choice Based Letting system, while I agree is a very proactive place to be, it’s also a very disappointing place when you hear nothing back after making your bid," she said.

“Focusing in on the Comeragh area, we have so little properties and so many applicants, so this is happening to a lot of people," she added.

Responding to the concerns, Claire Hartley, Senior Executive Officer with Waterford City and County Council said the reason applicants receive no response is due to limited staffing: “It’s a small team and we wouldn’t have the commitment to reply.

"There could be a hundred plus bids on some properties, so we don’t have the resources at the moment," she said.

Ms. Hartley added: “Once houses are allocated they are shown as ‘closed’ on the system, so any applicant can go back into the system and if the property is shown as closed they then know it’s been allocated, but that may take up to six to eight weeks so I appreciate it is a tense time for people but we just don’t have the resources to reply individually to everybody.”