Moving house is always stressful and rarely straightforward, but for people living in social housing, relocating can be an impossible task, mired in local authority bureaucracy.
However, the Conservative Party has proposed the creation of a national social housing database to allow social housing tenants to move by swapping homes with others.
Grant Shapps, the Shadow Housing Minister, told a National Housing Federation conference that the difficulties experienced by people in social housing trying to move house were hampering social mobility by constraining their ability to work.
He spoke of “entrenched limitations”, which also prevented people in social housing from moving to be closer to their children.
Social housing tenants are four times less likely to move house than private renters. A third of social housing tenants who moved house remained within one mile of their old homes while only one in ten moved further than ten miles away, he said, “For the first time ever, every family in social housing will have the chance to relocate by exchanging their home for another one, anywhere in the country,” Mr Shapps said.
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At present, tenants are only able to move in “extreme” circumstances, such as family crises, and as a result are being treated as “second-class citizens”, Mr Shapps said.
A number of councils and housing associations run locally based swap schemes, but the Conservatives’ plan would create the first large-scale database of its kind. Social housing had largely missed out on the online revolution, with only a handful of relevant sites in operation, Mr Shapps said.
He said that he hoped that the Government would be able to create a technological platform that would enable businesses to offer innovative services for social housing tenants, such as 360-degree virtual tours of prospective homes and text-message alerts when suitable homes became vacant or eligible for swapping.
Ben Pattison, the policy and research officer for the Building and Social Housing Foundation, said that there was a need for a scheme that provided tenants with more flexibility. “It’s definitely a good idea, although there are a lot of details that need to be worked out,” he said.
He expressed caution about the feasibility of a national scheme. “The ‘right to move’ could be an absolute disaster [for] housing associations to achieve. You could imagine there being huge demand to move to certain parts of the country — rural areas, for example — while others might really struggle,” he said.
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In May, Valerie Burgess, 67, and her husband John, 66, who are social housing tenants, moved to Hartlepool from Berkshire when a property finally became available.
Mrs Burgess said: “We were on the waiting list for ages having no joy. We had never been to Hartlepool before but we absolutely fell in love with the house. It is greater than all our expectations.”
A national database would make things easier, she said. ���I think it is a great idea. It would be good for us, because we have family down south. At the moment it’s almost impossible to move — there are so many different websites.”