Harrow has the fourth smallest social waiting list with 2,163 households on the local authority’s housing register. This places Harrow as the second smallest waiting list in Outer London, behind Bexley on 1,211 households, while having the second lowest waiting list of West London boroughs, behind Hammersmith and Fulham on 1,623 households.
On waiting times, the borough’s waiting list is also comparatively short – 316 days for one-bedroom properties. This makes Harrow the sixth shortest waiting time for one-bedroom homes in London, but third in West London behind Hammersmith and Fulham on 315 days and Brent on 292 days.
This is significant due to the large disparity between Brent and Harrow in their overall waiting list total, at 28,150 households, contrasting with 2,163 households respectively.
For larger properties, Harrow has waiting times of 1,204 days for two-bedroom properties, while having a 1,250-day waiting time for three-bedroom properties. Similar to other Outer London boroughs, Harrow’s overall waiting time for larger properties of four or more bedrooms is lower than London average at 669 days. This makes Harrow the fifth shortest waiting time for this property type in London.
Compared to other Outer London boroughs, Harrow also has a low number of social homes managed by the local authority and private registered providers at 9,752 properties. This gives Harrow the third lowest of social homes out of all other London boroughs, excluding the City of London.
Harrow operates a housing allocations scheme with four bands reflecting household priority. Band A+ is the council’s emergency and top priority band for households with an extremely urgent, life-threatening risk to health or wellbeing. This band is also for ex-service personnel with urgent housing need or for existing tenants freeing up larger properties than they require. Band A is similarly for urgent and high priority identified with a reasonable preference, including unsanitary accommodation or overcrowding.
Band B is a standard priority band for households with reasonable preference but less urgent need. Band C is for non-urgent priority households and for those already given statutory homelessness duty. The council also has 22 groups which correspond to different reasonable preference criteria, which is then assessed in line with their band priority.
Sources:
- Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Local Authority Housing Statistics data returns for 2022 to 2023
- Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Live tables on rents, lettings and tenancies; numbers of households on local authorities’ housing waiting lists, by district, England, from 1987
- Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Live tables on dwelling stock (including vacants); Dwelling stock by local authority and region, England, 2009-2023
- Office for National Statistics, Mid-Year Population Estimates, England and Wales, June 2023
- Greater London Authority, Land Area and Population Density, Ward and Borough data for 2023
- Sub-regions as defined by The London Plan
*A note on data sources. In order to provide comparisons of different local authorities total waiting lists, due to some boroughs not providing up to date information on the number of people on their social housing register we have used the most recent data (2022-23) published by MHCLG. Where boroughs provided us with more recent data, we have noted this.