Cumberland Housing Strategy 2025 to 2039 - Our challenges

The size of the council area adds additional practical and systemic challenges in terms of meeting the housing needs of diverse communities across urban, rural and coastal areas, which include Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and part of the Lake District National Park. House prices and incomes vary widely throughout the area and there are pockets of deprivation and affluence across Cumberland.

The Cumbria-wide housing register

Cumbria Choice was last reviewed in 2020, however since then LGR has significantly changed the make-up of the partnership to its current form of two councils and five Registered Providers. Therefore, it is timely to review the existing policy to reflect challenges and issues arising from the policy. Such as the move from five priority bands to three and reviewing the time that a Band A banding to allow upfront discretion to support the prevention of homelessness.

Housing is part of the Adult Social Care and Housing Directorate, and the relationship between these two areas means that it is important that Cumbria Choice functions as more than a general needs letting system and should also provide help to a wider range of people. In particular, the system should assist those most in need and at risk of experiencing homelessness and in priority need.

Since 2012, local housing authorities have had the opportunity to set their own local connection criteria and in the current Cumbria Choice, these tests vary between each legacy council. Local connection is an important part of the letting process because it allows a finite resource to be allocated to those in need who have a sustained link to their local area.

As of February 2025, there were 19,799 active registrations on Cumbria Choice. Of these, 11,233 households (56.7%) were from the three legacy local authorities that merged to form Cumberland Council.

Table 5: Cumberland households on the Cumbria Choice register

It is the role of the local authority to maintain a common housing register. In March 2025, there were 3,038 active registrations on Cumbria Choice belonging to households in Cumberland who have never placed a bid on a property. There are likely to be several factors for this such as: 

• their housing needs have already been met, and they have not removed themselves from the register because the process is too cumbersome
• they are not bidding because there are no properties available to meet their needs, and therefore they are unable to move

Table 6: non-bidding households in Cumberland

A shortfall of affordable properties

The General Needs Housing Study (GHNS) identified a net annual shortfall of 676 affordable homes across Cumberland. Cumberland's diverse geography plays a part in a shortfall of homes - both affordable and open market. The cost and quality of land varies widely across the area, and this has left many communities behind, particularly in areas where development is challenging. This is often because lower land values are compounded by higher costs associated with remediating land and dealing with outdated infrastructure.

Table 7: affordable need based on the housing register