Westminster Housing Register: 6,482 Waiting, 700 Homes

The Westminster housing register held 6,482 applicants in April 2025, up from 5,339 a year earlier. That is 1,144 more households in twelve months, a rise of 21.4 per cent. In the same period the council let around 700 homes.

Those two numbers, published by the council itself in its Demand and Lettings Projections report of October 2025, are the honest starting point for anyone thinking about applying. Nine households on the register for every home that comes up in a year, and the register growing faster than the supply.

Westminster’s own wording in its scheme documents is unusually direct about it: households “can face a long wait”, and the point of the new scheme is to allow “honest conversations with people about their prospects for being housed”.

The band system, and what replaced the points

Westminster brought in a new Housing Allocations Scheme in March 2025, replacing the old points-only system with priority bands. Points still exist inside the bands, but the range changed: where they used to run from 20 to 605, they now run from 200 to 1000. Everyone on the register had their points restated at the same time, which is why a great many people saw a new number appear on their application in spring 2025 and assumed something had gone wrong.

Bands A to E cover general needs social housing. Band S is separate: it is Community Supportive Housing, which is social housing for people aged over 60, and you bid on either general needs or CSH, never both.

Here is what the register actually looks like by band, and what each band actually received.

Read across the rows and the scheme’s logic is visible. Band A is 7 per cent of applicants and takes 28 per cent of the homes, because it is the top of the priority ladder. Band B, mostly households in temporary accommodation to whom the council has accepted a main housing duty, is 60 per cent of the register and takes 54 per cent of the homes.

Band E is the row to look at hardest. It is 17 per cent of the register and received 4 per cent of lettings, 21 homes across the whole year. The council’s projection for 2025-26 puts Band E at 2.7 per cent of general needs lettings against 16.9 per cent of demand. Band E is largely the Homeless (Other) group, much of it applications still under assessment, and the council says those circumstances often change. But if you are in Band E and nothing about your circumstances changes, the arithmetic is bleak and the council is no longer pretending otherwise.

The one place where supply runs ahead of demand is over-60s housing. Band S is 5 per cent of applicants, and the council expects 21 per cent of its lettings to be Community Supportive Housing, simply because more of that stock comes free.

Size is the other constraint

Nearly 70 per cent of the homes let in 2024-25 were studios or one-bedroom properties, including CSH. Family-sized homes are the scarce commodity in Westminster, and the wait for three and four bedrooms is materially longer than the headline figures suggest, regardless of band. A household with a high band and a need for a large home can wait longer than a household with a lower band needing a studio.

The supply side is not moving quickly either. Westminster’s fight over affordable flats in Marylebone reached the Court of Appeal, and the private market offers no relief: the borough’s house prices remain among the highest in the country.

Who qualifies

Two thresholds matter more than the rest.

Three years’ continuous residence. Every adult in the household has to evidence it, with a document covering every year: tenancy agreements, mortgage statements, council tax letters, bank statements, utility bills, DWP letters, school correspondence.

An income and savings test. The Housing Solutions Service assesses taxable income and savings, and the council notes that the threshold can change every April, tied to the higher rate of income tax. Tax-free state benefits are excluded from the calculation.

The online application takes about an hour. Proof of identity is required for every household member, and if you are applying on medical grounds, signing the Medical Assessment Form gives the service consent to contact your GP.

Residency priority: the change worth knowing about

Under the old scheme you got residency points only if you had already lived in Westminster for ten years at the point you joined the register. Join at nine years and the points never arrived, however long you then waited.

The new scheme fixed that. Residency priority is now awarded at ten years of residence, whether you reach it before or after joining the register, and years accumulate while you wait. Time spent in temporary accommodation placed by Westminster outside the borough, or in private rented housing secured through the Choosing PRS Scheme, counts towards the ten years.

If you have been on the register more than ten years, the council says it will award residency priority automatically. If you have been on it less than ten years, you will be asked to evidence your residence. You can submit evidence before you hit ten years and have the application flagged to gain the priority on the date you qualify. Existing Westminster council tenants do not need to provide the evidence at all.

Employment points are closing

This one has a deadline attached.

From 3 March 2025 the scheme stopped accepting new applicants for employment points. If you were not awarded them by that date, you cannot apply for them now. Anyone who held 50 employment points under the old scheme now shows 200 under the new one, which is the same relative priority rather than an increase.

Existing employment points are still governed by the old scheme’s rules, and they still require evidence of two years’ continuous employment immediately before the date of a housing offer, or engagement with HELP followed by employment totalling two consecutive years. Fail to evidence it at the point of offer and the points are removed and cannot be reapplied for, and you cannot accept the property.

There is also a hard expiry: if you have not been rehoused within 36 months, by 3 March 2028, the employment points are removed. If you lose your job before then you are obliged to tell the council, or you risk being shortlisted for a property you are no longer eligible for.

How bidding works

Westminster runs choice based lettings through Home Connections. Properties appear on a Wednesday and you can bid until midnight the following Sunday. Viewings are done digitally, through photographs or video, rather than in person, and tenancy agreements are signed electronically where possible.

You cannot bid if you are in rent arrears.

The day-to-day service is not run by council staff directly: the Housing Solutions Service is provided by Places for People, reachable on 020 7641 1000.

New priority groups since September 2025

The scheme added three groups, which came into effect in September 2025 and which sit above other applicants within their band:

• Exceptional Medical Priority
• Cumulative Medical Priority, for households where two or more members have a medical need
• Medical Priority and Severely Overcrowded, for households facing both at once

There is also a Next Generation Scheme, which lets some adult household members join the register in their own right where they have caring responsibilities or additional needs, and an Overcrowded Family Offer providing financial and practical support to household members willing to move out. Care leavers can now bid on homes rather than being directly assigned one.

If you were already on the register when the groups launched, the council says you were assigned to the most appropriate group for your circumstances during the transition.

What to do with all this

If you are already on the register, three things are worth checking this month: which band you are in, whether you are close enough to ten years’ residence to submit evidence now, and whether you hold employment points running against the March 2028 clock.

If you are thinking of applying, the honest read of the council’s own figures is that the register is a long-term prospect rather than a housing solution, particularly for anything larger than a one-bedroom flat, and particularly in Band E. Westminster publishes the full scheme, the summary and an easy-read version on its allocations scheme page, and paper copies are available in Westminster libraries. For the other side of the housing cost question, see our guide to Westminster council tax bands.

Frequently asked questions

How many people are on the Westminster housing register? 6,482 applicants as of April 2025, according to the council’s Demand and Lettings Projections report published in October 2025. That was up from 5,339 in April 2024, a rise of 21.4 per cent in one year.

How long is the wait for social housing in Westminster? The council does not publish a single waiting time, and the figures show why: around 700 homes are let a year against a register of over 6,000, and the outcome depends almost entirely on your band and the size of home you need. Band A received 28 per cent of lettings from 7 per cent of applicants, while Band E received 4 per cent from 17 per cent.

What are the Westminster housing bands? Bands A to E cover general needs social housing, in descending order of priority, and Band S covers Community Supportive Housing for people aged over 60. The band system replaced the old points-only scheme in March 2025, with points now running from 200 to 1000 inside the bands.

How long do you have to live in Westminster to apply? Three years of continuous residence, evidenced for every adult in the household and for every year. Residency priority, which is separate and adds to your application, is awarded after ten years.

Can I still get employment points on the Westminster housing register? No. The scheme stopped accepting new applicants for employment points on 3 March 2025. Existing employment points expire if the applicant has not been rehoused by 3 March 2028.

When can I bid for a property? Properties are advertised on Home Connections from the Wednesday they appear until midnight the following Sunday. You cannot bid while you are in rent arrears.

Who runs Westminster’s housing service? The Housing Solutions Service is provided by Places for People on the council’s behalf, on 020 7641 1000. The Cabinet Member for Housing is Councillor Liza Begum.