Support for people on the housing register
Lewisham Find Your Home
You can register your housing application and view and bid for properties on the Lewisham Find Your Home website.
Read our step by step guide on finding your home in Lewisham.
How to apply for a home
In order to bid for social housing, you will need to apply to join the housing register. Find out more about how to apply for social housing in Lewisham.
If you are a tenant of an existing housing association and want to transfer to a new property, you will need to apply to join your housing association's transfer list. You should contact your housing association to find out more about this.
Check which priority band you are in
Social housing in Lewisham is allocated to ensure those in greatest need are prioritised. If your application to join the housing register is successful, you will be allocated into one of four priority bands.
Band 1 includes households with an urgent need to move due to their life being in danger; tenants of Council or partner landlords needing to move as their home is due to be demolished; and young people to whom the Council has a corporate parental responsibility.
Band 2 includes households who are severely overcrowded as their property is three bedrooms short for their needs; households to whom the Council owes a statutory homeless duty and have additional needs; households assessed as suffering from a serious physical or mental illness as a result of their present housing circumstances.
Band 3 includes households to whom the Council owes a statutory homeless duty and households who are overcrowded as their property is two bedrooms short for their needs.
Band 4 includes households who are overcrowded as their property is one bedroom short for their needs or households who are statutorily overcrowded.
Find out more information about the priority bands in our Housing Allocations Policy.
If you are eligible for Lewisham Find Your Home, you should have received a letter with information about which band your application is in and the list date. This is the date your application was accepted or the date of any change in circumstances that led to a change of band. The higher the band of your application, the higher the priority you have when it comes to bidding for properties.
Property adverts
Each advert on Lewisham Find Your Home will provide details about the properties available, the landlord, the weekly rent, the property’s features and who it is most suitable for. This will include a photograph of the property, if one is available. In some cases the photograph will be of a similar property in the street or block, rather than the specific property being advertised.
The advert will also include details about whether the property is being advertised with priority for specific households (e.g. decant households who have to move because of major repairs works, improvements or redevelopment).
Making a bid
When you see a property that you are interested in bidding on, check that the deadline has not passed and check that the property is suitable for you and your family. Check that the property has enough bedrooms and meets any medical needs. Before you bid, carefully check all of the details in the advert and make sure you can afford the rent. You may want to visit the area or street before you bid to make sure it is somewhere you would like to live.
To make a bid for a property, go to the Lewisham Find Your Home website and log into your application. You can only bid for one property a week and you can withdraw or change your bid at any time during the advertising cycle.
If you need help bidding, you can ask a friend, relative or other helper to bid for properties on your behalf. If you do not have anybody who can help make bids on your behalf, you may be able to get help from the Lewisham Find Your Home support officer. For an assessment, please call 020 8314 9097. If you are a tenant of a housing association, you should contact them for assistance.
If you are successful, go to an interview and view the property
Offers are not made on a first-come, first-served basis. We look at all of the requests together after the deadline. If more than one eligible person with the same rehousing need applies for the same property, the person who has been in need longest will have preference (i.e. the person with the oldest housing list date.)
We start by looking at applicants in the highest band. If no one in that band is suitable, we go to the next highest band and work our way down. When we advertise properties indicating preference to a certain category e.g. decants, we will consider that category first and then go to the highest band if no one is suitable.
We often carry out multiple viewings, so will send up to three applicants to the landlord to be considered for each property. The landlord will tell you what position of the three you are in. During this process, you will not be able to bid again until all of the viewings have finished and the landlord has notified the Allocations Team. We do not carry out multiple viewings for wheelchair-adapted properties or properties with a preference for clients subject to the one-offer policy.
If you are one of the successful applicants, the landlord will contact you using the contact details you entered on your online housing application, so it is important you keep these up to date. You may be asked to go in for an interview or be visited in your home first. You can view the property before you decide to take it.
Before you move in, you may have to provide us with evidence – such as identification, proof of income or proof of local connection – to confirm your household details.
Some people can only be offered housing once, so will need to consider this offer very carefully. If they refuse it, they will not get another offer, and cannot use Lewisham Find Your Home again for 12 months, pending eligibility. If you have been accepted as priority homeless, you will only be offered housing once. If you think the property you have been offered is unsuitable, you should move into the property and request a review. You should request a review in writing within 21 days of viewing the property.
If the one-offer policy does not apply to you, you can have two homes offered to you, except for decants and large-scale decants. If you don’t come to a viewing, accept an offer or sign a tenancy agreement of two properties in a row, you will be disqualified for 12 months. You can find out how many offers you are entitled to by viewing the table at section 2.5.1 of the Allocations Policy.
If you’re not successful, try another week and keep checking the results in the weekly newsletter or online.
Lewisham Find Your Home will publish details of all the properties that have been let, showing the band of the successful person and how many eligible people put in a request for the property. This can be found on the Feedback section of the Lewisham Find Your Home website. These details will help you work out which properties you should request each week. The results may take a few weeks to appear.
We may offer some properties directly to applicants. These properties won’t be advertised, but we will show the results in the newsletter after they are let.
If you are not successful, try another week and keep checking the results in the weekly newsletter or online.
Lewisham Find Your Home will publish details of all the properties that have been let, showing the band of the successful person and how many eligible people put in a request for the property. This will help you work out which properties you should request each week. The results may take a few weeks to appear.
We may offer some properties directly to applicants. These properties won’t be advertised, but we will show the results in the newsletter after they are let.
If your circumstances change
If you feel there are changes you need to make to your application then please go online to your housing register application and complete a change of circumstance form. You need to log in to your Lewisham Find Your Home account and:
- Click on ‘Your Account’ in blue at the top of the page
- Click on ‘Have your circumstances changed?’ in the blue box on the right
- Click on ‘Continue’ and complete the questionnaire. The form should take around 40 minutes to complete.
If you are submitting a change in circumstances, you will be expected to provide supporting documentation when you submit your request. Information about what you need to upload or send to us can be found in the social housing application checklist. Once all proof documents have been received to verify your application, your application will be assessed in line with the new Housing Allocations Policy and you will be placed into Band 1, 2, 3 or 4.
If you do not send the information we ask for within 28 days of submitting your request, it will be closed and you will remain in your current band.
If your Housing Benefit circumstances change
You must let us know if your circumstances change in the following ways:
- your benefits stop or you start claiming benefits
- you start work or stop work
- your earnings increase or decrease
- your savings or capital increase
- someone leaves or moves into the household
- you’ve moved from your temporary accommodation or private rented accommodation on your own accord.