General Needs Housing

Council Housing for waiting list applicants

  • Shetland Islands Council has around 1,751 houses and flats – 1480 general needs properties and just under 271 units of sheltered housing designed for people who require the support of a housing support worker (warden).
  • The Council's general needs housing stock is being reduced by an average of 42 properties a year which are sold to sitting tenants under the Right to Buy scheme.
  • However, the Council still remains by far the biggest provider of social rented housing. Its stock is well distributed throughout the islands although just over half is in Lerwick.
  • The location of general needs properties in Shetland and the size of these properties is detailed in Table A.

Click here for Sheltered Housing.

Number and Type of Applicants

At September 2007 the total number of applicants on the Council's waiting list were made up of the following categories:

General Needs Applicants (including sheltered)
488
SIC Transfer Applicants
178
Homeless Applicants (including applicants given advice & assistance only)
71
Hjaltland, Other LA, Other HA, Scottish Homes
50
Incoming Worker
3
Special Case Applicants

2
Total
792

Applicants are allowed to make up to four choices from the 'Areas of choice' available. The number of applications for each area of choice and the size of property required by applicants are detailed in Table B.

An applicant's chance of being offered a Council property is influenced by:

  1. How often a vacancy occurs in any one of the applicant's three areas of choice.
  2. The number of points the application has been awarded.
  3. The position this places the applicant on the waiting list for that area of choice, in comparison with other applicants.

There are differing demands for housing, in some areas there is a lengthy waiting list with few properties being allocated, whilst in other areas the availability of housing is greater so applicants are likely to be housed more quickly.

An indication of the availability of general needs housing in each of the areas can be obtained from Table C which shows the number of Council properties in each area, the number of times a re-let has occurred in the last year and the numbers of people presently on the waiting list for that area.

The figures show that around 21% of all general needs applicants on the councils waiting list can expect to be housed each year based on last years re-let figure. Approximately over a third of all re-lets are in Lerwick. However, only around 1 in 19 of applicants for the Lerwick area are housed each year. In the country areas, Firth, Urafirth, and Vidlin offer the best housing opportunities (approximately 1 in 2 applicants were housed in 2006/2007 in these areas).

Next - Waiting List and Allocation Process