CHANGES to the council’s homes policy housing waiting list for homes in Wiltshire could mean thousands of people miss out on a chance of a property.

Homes4Wiltshire, the company that runs housing for Wiltshire Council, has re-organised the way people on the waiting list are prioritised, with numbered bands instead of the previous platinum to bronze ranking.

In October, Wiltshire Council sent letters to the thousands of people in the bronze bracket to tell them they would need to reapply for the waiting list within eight weeks of December 8 or be taken off the register completely.

They were also told that, as they are in the lowest priority banding, they should seek an alternative way of finding a new home. A notice was also placed on the council’s website.

However, many residents claim they did not receive the letter and therefore could have been struck off the waiting list if not informed by other people.

They fear that thousands of people are unaware they have to re-apply and will be removed from the list.

Hayley Blake is a Malmesbury resident who has a child with autism and ADHD, requiring a separate room to sleep in, and claims she has had no letters about the waiting list changes.

She said: “I genuinely wouldn’t have had a clue if a man hadn’t asked a question on Facebook. You bookmark the page to bid and go straight to the login screen. You don’t go to the homepage which is where the information is.

“If I wasn’t looking for it, I would have gone straight to the login page and completely missed it.”

Another family on the register, who wished to remain anonymous, said they had been on the housing register for three years and had come close to getting a suitable house but never succeeded.

This Malmesbury family includes a son who is in the armed forces but sleeps on a corner sofa as they have no extra bedroom for him.

They said: “We’ve received no letters whatsoever about what is going on. They’ve now told us we’ve got to reapply and that we’ll be re-banded.

“We just feel like we’re fighting a losing battle all the time.”

A spokesman for Wiltshire Council explained that there were more than 23,000 people on the register for housing and that only 2,000 per year secure a home.

He added: “We have many thousands of people on the housing register with no housing needs. We recently wrote to these people to explain that our new policy aims to manage client expectations better by not registering those who are unlikely to be re-housed through Homes4Wiltshire, and to encourage clients currently in bronze band to look at the alternative options available to them.”

Chairman of Malmesbury charity Help Empowerment And Local Support (HEALS), Gavin Grant, said: “I have spoken to a number of local residents who are on the waiting list and who didn’t know anything about this.

“You would hope that something as important as this was worth more than one letter.”