Applying for Council housing

How to contact us

At your nearest Housing and Property Office. You can also get housing application forms and information and advice from any of the Council's Service Points.

Who can apply for Council housing?

To be eligible to apply for Council housing in the Highlands, you need to be 16 and over. You can apply from anywhere in the country to be on the housing list, but priority is given to people who need to reside here - because they live here or need to be here for work or family reasons.

Homelessness

If you are homeless or threatened with homelessness, you can get information on what to do from the Homelessness page.

Obtaining Housing

In most parts of the Highlands there is a very great demand for Council houses, but very few become available for relet each year. This means that, although there are thousands of households on our housinglists (currently over 11,000) only a small number can be housed each year. There is a much greater demand for accommodation than we are able to meet and it will not be possible to house everyone who applies. Our first priority is to give houses to people in the most housing need - to families with children or to other people who may be vulnerable in some way, because of age or health, who are homeless or who live in insecure, overcrowded or substandard accommodation.

Because of this, we have developed the Housing Options Manual, to offer information on what else you can do to find housing that suits you. You can access the information in the manual by following the link below. You can also find paper copies of the manual in Housing Offices and Service Points.

For further information, please see:

Highland Housing Register
Housing Options Manual - a guide to Housing Options in the Highlands
How to get more housing information
Streetwise Highland - a directory of services for homeless people - offsite link