Welcome to Brighton & Hove City Council's Homemove site

Housing advice enquiry

For support if you are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless please visit the Brighton & Hove City Council website.

New Housing register application

If you are interested in joining the housing register for social housing, complete the online application form. Please make sure you submit all the supporting evidence required.

Search and bid for homes

Search for available homes. Homes are advertised each fortnight. You can bid for up to 3 homes each fortnight.

Please note:

You cannot bid until you have been fully assessed and you have received your decision email which confirms your band, your priority date, the size of property you are eligible for, and your priority queue.

You can view available properties on our see all properties page.

Uploading documents

You can upload documents to support your application in the Homemove applicant portal.

Change of Circumstances (Housing register only)

If your circumstances have changed, you need to bring your application up to date in the Homemove applicant portal.

You need to inform us if your contact details, household, address, medical needs, mobility needs, support needs or anything else that is relevant to your housing situation has changed.

It is important that you keep your details up to date. If you don't keep your contact details up to date you may miss out on an offer of a home or have your application cancelled.

Incomplete applications (Housing register only)

Please login to the Homemove applicant portal to finish an incomplete application.

You have 28 days from the date you started to complete the full application before it is deleted.

Note: Customers that have an iCloud or Yahoo email address, if you have not received any communication please check your spam/junk folder.

Changes to the Brighton & Hove City Council Housing Allocations Policy

In October 2024, Brighton & Hove City Council Cabinet approved changes to the Housing Allocations Policy.

The Housing Allocations Policy sets out who has priority for social housing in the city and home socially rented homes are allocated.

On 8th April 2025, the changes to the Housing Allocations Policy were made.

Most applications have not been impacted by the changes to the Housing Allocations Policy but people whose have will be written to directly.

The most significant change to the new Housing Allocations Policy is the removal of the 'queues'. Priority will no longer be awarded for individual properties based on whether an applicant is homeless, a homeseeker or a transferring tenant. Now, when you bid on a property, your bid will be shortlisted by band and priority date alone. 

The other changes to the Housing Allocations Policy are:

Change the residency criteria from 5 years to 5-out-of-7 years.

For example, you may still qualify to join the register if you move out of the city for a short period of time to care for a relative.

Remove the queue divisions to enable households to bid on all properties for their bedroom and mobility need.

Priority will be based on band and priority date.  There will be no priority queues from April 2025. 

Give reasonable preference to households with an accepted homelessness duty.

Where the council is satisfied households are homeless or at risk at homelessness within 56 days, these households will qualify for reasonable preference.  

Give reasonable preference where households work with us to move on from temporary accommodation.

If we help you move out of the council’s temporary accommodation into private sector housing, you will be permitted to be registered and able to bid for properties on Homemove.

Joint social housing tenants may qualify to join the housing register.

This means that you may qualify if you are a joint tenant and only one of you is moving.

Amend priority awarded to current or former armed forces personnel.

If you are injured because of service, you or your spouse may get Band A. Other personnel may be assessed as Band B due to discharge of service. 

Enable direct offers in exceptional circumstances.

This will be decided by the council and will generally be very unusual circumstances. Sadly, there are many people who are living in accommodation which is too small or does not meet their need – this would not normally be exceptional.

Remove priority Band A status for households in temporary accommodation, where the property is being returned to the landlord.

You will be placed on a waiting list for alternative temporary accommodation and will still be able to bid for properties available via Homemove

Permit households with a 4-bed or more need experiencing statutory overcrowding to bid for Brighton & Hove council properties which are one bedroom short of their need, where this would resolve statutory overcrowding.

This will only be for those in need of a larger property that have been assessed as Band A statutory overcrowded. This will not be available to those assessed with other household sizes, bands or band reasons.

What happens now?

You can continue to bid for properties as normal.

There will be changes to how we advertise properties so please ensure that you look at the detail of the adverts.

These changes will affect everyone on the housing register.

If your application has been reassessed and your priority banding has changed we will write to you individually. You can see your current banding by logging into your account.

You can view the Brighton & Hove City Council Allocations Policy here.

Message from Southern Housing:

Preston Barracks - New Development

Due to unforeseen circumstances with the contractor building the Preston Barracks (Saunders Park View) properties, all adverts have been withdrawn to allow applicants to continue bidding. The properties will be readvertised once a new contractor has been instructed to carry out building works however we do not have a timescale for when this will be. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.