The Fundamental Review of Allocations

The APG on Homelessness met on Tuesday 3 June for its Annual General Meeting and to hear from representatives from the Housing Executive about the ongoing Fundamental Review of Allocations (FRA) process.

Jennifer Hawthorne, Director of Housing, and Fiona Neilan, Senior Project Manager for the FRA project, briefed the group on the changes being made to the allocation process. The presentation focused on the proposals which will impact on households experiencing homelessness who are on the social housing waiting list.

As of 31 March 2025, 31,719 households on the Social Housing Waiting List had homelessness status. The changes being implemented will impact on tens of thousands of households here when it comes to accessing social housing.

Discharging the homelessness duty to the Private Rental Sector?

MLAs had a range of questions about the changes. Of particular note was proposal 4, which would see the custom and practice of the Housing Executive to only discharge the homelessness duty into social housing change to allow for a tenure neutral discharge of the duty. This is the situation in other parts of the UK, but would mark a significant change for NI.

Some members raised concerns about how this would work in practice especially with affordability and quality issues in the PRS in NI.

Ms Hawthorne was clear with members that considerable thought has gone in to how this change will be operationalised in practice and that this change would be accompanied by safeguards.

A notable theme stressed by the representatives of the Housing Executive throughout the presentation was the importance of communicating to stakeholders the impact of the proposed changes. The homelessness sector will have an important role to play in communicating to people the sector exists to support what these changes will mean for them.

You can read more about the fundamental review of allocations process on the Housing Executive website.

APG Office Bearers

The APG elected its office bearers for the next year with Kellie Armstrong MLA re-elected as Chair; Colm Gildernew MLA as Vice-Chair; Brian Kingston MLA as Secretary; and Nick Mathison MLA as Treasurer. As the Secretariat of the APG on Homelessness we are grateful to these members for being willing to serve as office bearers. We look forward to working with members of the group in the year ahead.

The next meeting of the APG is scheduled for September.