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People with the greatest housing needs are waiting months or even years in the highest priority bands of councils’ social housing registers in many parts of England, according to data compiled by The House.

In some local authorities, people in the highest priority band are placed in social housing after waits of more than two years. Among those in this band who have not yet been rehoused the waits are even longer.

Recent years have seen many reports of overall waiting times for social housing lasting many years in parts of London, but these tend to cover everyone on the waiting list, including people in low priority bands.

Figures obtained by The House under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act focus specifically on people in each council’s highest priority band – which are meant to cater to the most severe housing needs – and separately those in each council’s second-highest priority band.

The figures show that applicants who were placed in social housing by 147 councils in 2024-25 had on average spent 319 days – around 10 months – in their council’s highest housing priority band. In 40 council areas the average wait in the highest priority band was more than a year.

Among applicants who had not been rehoused at the point that councils responded to the FOI request, the average wait in the highest priority band was 551 days and counting – around a year and a half – across the 152 councils that supplied this data.

The average wait in councils’ second-highest priority bands was 501 days for applicants who were placed in social housing in 2024-25, and 669 days for applicants who were not rehoused.

Overall, there are around 300 councils in England responsible for maintaining housing registers, the waiting lists for social housing.

Deborah Garvie, policy manager at housing charity Shelter, says the long wait times are due to the “absolutely chronic shortage” of social rent homes.

“In some areas a lot of the households on the waiting list will be families that need family homes. So, if most of what comes up [as available] is one-bedroom flats, that’s not going to be suitable for them, particularly where people might need a larger family home.”

“People on the housing register often have extremely limited options for rehousing and can spend years in unsuitable or overcrowded accommodation with very little clarity on when, or if, their situation will improve,” adds Niki Lampaski, a housing activist in Hackney. “That creates a constant sense of living in limbo.”

“Being stuck on social housing waiting lists means putting our lives on hold for months and years,” says Laura Vicinanza of disabled people’s organisation Inclusion London. “The consequence is living in homes that do not meet our needs. Homes where we struggle to get in and out of the front door. Homes where we cannot access basic facilities like kitchens and bathrooms.”

“For families with disabled children, the situation can be particularly distressing,” Lampaski adds. “When medical or disability needs are involved, families often have to repeatedly evidence and re-explain the extent of their child’s condition through assessments, reviews and appeals. This leads to long periods of back and forth with the council, adding further barriers and delays with little prospect of resolution.”

Separate data published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) shows that the percentage of new mainstream social housing lettings that went to people who’d been on the waiting list for less than a year fell in 2024/25 to 50.7 per cent, its lowest level since the data was first published in 2018/19.

There’s the impact of conditions in temporary accommodation… often very cramped, with families living in one room, having to share beds

Garvie says long waits for social housing mean families who have been made homeless get stuck in often unsuitable temporary accommodation for extended periods – which brings its own knock-on costs.

“A lot of temporary accommodation doesn’t have access to Wi-Fi, there are no laundry facilities so you’re having to pay for laundry, there’s often no or inadequate cooking facilities so you can’t bulk buy food or batch cook, or in some cases you’re having to buy takeaways and ready meals which are obviously very expensive,” she says.

“And then there’s the impact of conditions in temporary accommodation as well – often very cramped, with families living in one room, having to share beds.”

Greenwich has among the longest waiting times of those councils that supplied figures. Excluding backdated cases, 33 applicants were rehoused into social housing in 2024/25 having spent on average 1,748 days – more than four and a half years – in the council’s highest priority band.

Meanwhile Greenwich’s 212 non-backdated applicants in the top band who are still yet to be rehoused have waited 2,703 days on average – nearly seven and a half years – in that highest priority tier.

The extreme length of wait times in Greenwich may be partly because the council’s highest priority tier – Band A in its housing allocation policy – is geared towards people who the council want to rehouse, rather than who necessarily want to be rehoused themselves. This includes social housing tenants who are under-occupying homes with spare bedrooms, and those living in homes with disability-related adaptations they don’t need.

Some councils said in their FOI responses that their average wait times were pushed up by under-occupying social housing tenants who the council placed in the highest priority band in order to free up family homes, but who rarely bid on properties and are reluctant to move despite potentially being hit by the ‘bedroom tax’.

“Lots of people who are affected by it don’t want to lose their home, and so they may not be bidding on homes even if they’re at the top of the list,” says Garvie. “If they are settled and happy in their home and it’s their family home, then they’re going to try and do their best to hang on to their home, like anyone would.”

Instead, it is Greenwich’s second highest priority tier – Band B1 – that covers homeless people, severely overcrowded housing, insanitary living conditions, domestic abuse and hate crime victims, and households with housing-related medical needs. But they too face ominously long waits – excluding backdated cases, average waits in Band B1 were 761 days for applicants who were placed in social housing in 2024/25, and 1,152 days for those yet to be rehoused – more than two years and three years respectively.

A Greenwich Council spokesperson says: “Our multi-million-pound Greenwich Build programme will deliver 1,750 sustainable new homes, with over 588 homes now complete or underway. This programme is the largest for any local authority in the country and we are on course to rehouse around 2,000 households this year.”

In Hastings, applicants who were placed in social housing in 2024/25 had spent 1,042 days on average in Band A, while those still waiting for housing have spent 709 days in the top tier. Hastings’ Band A covers under-occupiers, but also people whose housing conditions present an immediate threat of serious injury or death, or who urgently need to move to significantly improve their medical condition or disability.

Glenn Haffenden, leader of Hastings Borough Council and lead councillor for housing, says: “We have seen record rises in house prices and rents and with Local Housing Allowance failing to rise alongside rents, residents on lower incomes have found it impossible to meet their own need for housing without seeking help from the council.”

The longest wait times are generally in London, the South East and Essex – but average waits of more than a year can also be found in Coventry, Newark and Sherwood, Bradford, East Suffolk, Cornwall, Chesterfield, Birmingham, Nottingham and Trafford, among others.

Some councils ‘backdate’ certain types of social housing applicant, such as children’s care leavers, to boost their chances of being housed. This can make their average wait times seem longer than they really are. The House’s FOI request specifically asked councils to exclude such backdated applications from their figures.

Last year the government announced £39bn in funding for social and affordable housing over 10 years, with an aim of delivering 300,000 homes, with at least 60 per cent at social rents. The announcement was welcomed by Shelter as a “good start”.

A spokesperson for MHCLG says: “We know waiting lists are often far too long and we’re taking action to give people the stability and security they deserve. We’re building 1.5 million homes and investing a record £39bn in social and affordable housing to help councils get spades in the ground.

“This is alongside our changes to right to buy, which will make sure councils can keep hold of desperately needed homes.”