Common Allocations Policy April 2025

In line with our commitment to meeting the outcomes of the Scottish Social Housing Charter, we work collaboratively to monitor our performance. We want to continuously improve our service delivery and implementation of the Common Allocations Policy.

Quality assurance

We use a quality assurance system to make sure we provide an efficient and consistent service to our applicants and assess their applications accurately, fully reflecting their housing needs. Every month we:

• carry out a 10% random audit of new housing applications to make sure we have carried out assessments in line with our policy, performance standards and legal requirements
• report on the number of complaints, appeals and outcomes

Performance management

We will review our performance in managing the CAP and CHR, and report regularly to the senior management teams of all the partners and the CHR Monitoring Group using the following monitoring reports:

• Access to the CHR
  We will monitor performance against the following indicators which assess admission to the Common Housing Register:
  • number of new applications received
  • number of new applications registered
  • time taken to register an application
  • number of new applications by ethnicity, gender, disability, age, religion/belief, sexual orientation
• Assessing applications
  We will monitor performance against the following indicators which evaluate our assessment of applications:
  • time taken to process an application
  • number of applicants reviewed and removed from the list
  • number of applicants suspended including group and grounds for suspension
  • number of applicants who have chosen to defer their application
  • number of appeals made, including the outcomes
  • number of complaints received, including the outcomes
• Outcomes
  We will monitor performance against the following indicators which assess the outcomes achieved by housing applicants:
  • number of applications in each group
  • number of lets to applicants by group against proportion
  • time taken to offer housing to applicants in Strategic and Homelessness group
  • number of offers accepted and refused, by group and reason for refusal
  • number of applicants nominated to a registered social housing landlord and re-housed and, reasons for refusing a nomination
  • number of applicants re-housed through a mutual exchange
  • number of applicants under-occupying by one or two bedrooms who are rehoused
  • number and reason for bypassing an applicant for an offer of housing

Review of the Common Allocations Policy

We will also use a variety of methods to review the content of this policy, as well as the information provided in our leaflets and on our website.

In particular, we will:

• obtain feedback about the quality of information and service provided
• review the content of all of our publications and correspondence to ensure that it is accurate, up-to-date and written in plain language

We will use the outcomes from our assessment and customer feedback to improve our service and working practices.

We will review this policy every three years, or earlier if required in light of changes in the law or good practice guidance.