Council housing allocation

When you apply for a council home, we’ll assess your application against our Housing Allocations Policy. This policy is designed to help us prioritise council home allocation in a way that’s open, transparent and fair. It was designed in consultation with our tenants and housing applicants and we have a report on the results of our consultation.

There are two key elements of the policy which help us decide who to offer a home to – the housing ‘group’ we have allocated you to, and the number of points you have been awarded.

There are 4 housing groups:

• Homeless – people who have been assessed as homeless by our housing options team
• Strategic – people who are not homeless but have an urgent or exceptional need for a home
• Transfer – current Stirling Council tenants and tenants of housing associations in the Stirling area
• Waiting – all other applicants

We offer homes to people in the homeless and strategic groups according to the date they applied. People in the transfer and waiting groups are awarded points to decide their priority.

We award points for a variety of reasons including:

• your personal circumstances
• the condition of your current property
• overcrowding
• social inclusion and medical reasons

If you think you qualify for points on medical grounds, you’ll need to complete the Medical Application form. This will be assessed by an independent medical specialist. The form contains guidance notes on how to complete the form and circumstances that we will not award points so please pay particular attention to this.

The length of time you'll have wait for a council home depends on several factors including the size and type of house you need, and the area you want to move to. We’ll be able to give you some guidance on this after we assess your application.

If you’re in the homeless group, we’ll make you two reasonable offers of housing. If you refuse them both, you’ll be removed from the homeless list.

Applicants in the other groups will be suspended from the housing list for 12 months if two reasonable offers of housing are refused.

If you think our offers aren’t reasonable you can make an appeal. There’s information on how to do this in the Applicants Guide.

If you want to move to another council house, you can join the housing list by completing an application form.

You can also apply for a mutual exchange – where you swap properties with another council or housing association tenant in any Scottish council area.

More information about mutual exchanges.

There is information about council housing locations and turnover in the housing stock and turnover document.

Our Applicants Guide contains the answers to lots of commonly asked questions. The

Housing Allocations Policy document gives you full information on how we allocate and prioritise applications.

If you already have an application for housing, you can sign up to Housing Online to view your position on the housing list and make changes to your application. You’ll need your application reference number to sign up to this service.

If you need more help you can email us at allocations@stirling.gov.uk or call 01786 404040 and ask for the Allocations team.