Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if she will take steps to ensure that armed forces veterans are given priority status on local authority housing registers.

Local authorities are responsible for designing and managing their own housing allocations policies to meet local need within the framework of legislation under which certain categories of people must be given priority.

By law, local authorities must give ‘additional preference’ (high priority) to veterans where they fall within one or more of the ‘reasonable preference’ (priority) categories and have urgent housing needs. Social housing allocations guidance can be found on gov.uk here.

In addition, we have made changes to social housing allocations regulations to exempt all veterans from local connection and residency tests, where these apply, to facilitate their access to social housing. The regulations came into force on 18 December 2024.