Tees valley Homefinder will no longer be available for applicants to use to bid on homes in Hartlepool come April 2023, after the scheme was branded "a monumental failure" to its applicants.
24th Feb 2023 07:05am
A Housing choice based lettings service that was supposedly designed to be more “fair” and “transparent” is set to be SCRAPPED, after it ironically failed to be “fair” & “transparent” to its users.
"Unfair" & not transparent over the allocation of homes sealed the fate of yet another failed CBL scheme on Teesside.
Hartlepool Borough Council announced yesterday that it was officially withdrawing from the Tees Valley lettings partnership (Tees Valley Homefinder) following a deluge of complaints from applicants that the service was WORSE than the prevous failed scheme that was scrapped just two years ago called ‘Compass’.
The move means that applicants living in Hartlepool will once again have to reapply to the local borough council as a new housing applicant if they wish to continue to bid for homes available to rent in the area, with Tees Valley Homefinder only set to be used to advertise properties outside of Hartlepool.....
There's currently no way of mirating a persons old application over to the new service according to council officers working on the new scheme. .
Existing Tees Valley Homefinder Applicants will have to start again with a new application if they want to bid for homes in Hartlepool
The new service ‘Hartlepool Home Search’ is set to officially go live in April 2023, where council officers have said that its currently not possible for applicants to migrate their existing Tees Valley Homefider application over to the new local CBL system leaving applicants to once again reapply if they wish to be considered for available homes in the area.
Its claimed that the withdrawl of Hartlepool Borough Council from the Tees Valley lettings partnership comes after claims of a potential legal case brought against the local council where its claimed the lack of transparency & differences in lettings policies has led to significant confusion over the fairness of the allocation of properties within the local area, with many members of the public registered on the scheme branding it WORSE than the previous ‘compass’ system that led to significant concerns the bidding system was being overridden by council officers who were awarding significant preference to applicants pushing those more in need further down the waiting list in the process.
HBC claims that applicants worried about losing their position on the housing waiting list can be assured that officers will conduct weekly checks for applicants registering for the new system & allocating them their time on the waiting list from their previous Tees Valley Homefinder Applciation, this is despite claims that HBC systems cannot share information between the two services which in turn is leading many to suggest that the new Choice Based Lettings System will once again bellyflop as the previous one did costing the local tax payer thousands of pounds in the process with calls for Choice Based Lettings in Hartlepool to be finally scrapped & councillors to publicly state that Choice Based Lettings is a “failure” & has never worked in the best interests of its applicants, with many local councils now returning to their previous allocation systems branding Choice Based Lettigns as "expensive to run" & "ineffective" at managing the areas vacant housing stock.
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