Waltham Forest has the 13th highest waiting list in London with 9,134 households on the local authority housing register according to official statistics. Compared to other East London boroughs, Waltham Forest has the fifth highest waiting list with Newham having the highest total at 35,625. However, more recent data from the borough suggests Waltham Forest’s total could have increased to around 9,500.
For waiting times, Waltham Forest has the 11th longest wait for a one-bedroom property in London at 913 days. This is the seventh highest in East London, with Lewisham the highest at 2,208 days. Waltham Forest follows the general pan-London trend for larger properties having longer wait times. For two-bedroom properties, households wait on average for 1,278 days while three bedroom properties have wait times of 2,008 days. For larger, family-sized properties with four or more bedrooms, Waltham Forest’s waiting times are the ninth highest in London at 2,555 days.
Among the local authorities which provided waiting times for wheelchair-adapted properties, Waltham Forest has the sixth highest waiting time at 675 days. However, due to the differences in housing allocation policies and the fact that we were unable to secure data for all boroughs, this finding should be treated with caution.
As London’s 16th most densely populated borough with 7,664 residents per square km, Waltham Forest has the 17th highest total social housing stock at 22,652 social homes. The majority of these are managed by private registered providers with the local authority managing 9,684 homes. Waltham Forest’s total social housing stock has increased marginally since 2010 when there were 21,186 social homes in the borough.
Waltham Forest Council operates a choice-based lettings system with a banding system comprising five priority bands. Band 1 is for extremely pressing or time-limited housing applications, typically linked to emergency health or welfare needs, while Band 2 is for urgent but non life-threatening applications where applicants may reflect several reasonable preferences. Band 3 is the borough’s largest banding reflecting a heightened medium priority to move, while Band 4 is for households with a standard priority level, including homeless households not already designated with a reasonable preference. Band 5 is designated for households with no urgent priority or reasonable preferences.
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.