Finding a home FAQs

During the hours of 9am-12pm and 2pm-4pm, please attend the Town Hall, you will be able to speak to the Emergency duty officer.  We will try to find you a place to stay and give advice on looking for a permanent home. For out of hours and weekends, please call 01642 524552. For more information please see our Homeless Advice pages [internal link]. 

Your landlord or agent needs to serve a notice for them to legally ask you to leave the property (Usually a Section 21 notice). When you receive this, please complete an application form to apply for housing with us, once you have done this, please upload a copy of the notice along with any other relevant documents.  Our team will verify your application and arrange for you to come and see one of our Housing Options advisors.

Find more information here [internal link].

Information about how to apply for a council home can be found here [internal link] or you can go directly to Darlington Homesearch [external link] to register your application online.

Depending on your circumstances, current situation and the size of the property you need, it may be some time before you are offered a property.  We are unable to give a timescale but recommend you visit the website every week to see what is available for you to apply for.

We will contact you by telephone to make you the offer and we will arrange for you to view the property within a couple of days.  Once you have accepted the offer we will arrange for the tenancy agreement and other documents to be sent to you via email for you to sign.  We will arrange gas and electricity safety checks to be carried out and will  confirm a tenancy start date for you.  You will need to arrange to transfer all utility bills into your name.

If you have been given priority banding and the refusal is classed as unreasonable we may remove your priority. Please see our allocation policy [pdf document] for further details.

If you owe rent to your current or former landlord you may be suspended from applying for properties  – the length of time this will depend on the level of arrears you have.  More information can be found under Appendix 2 of our allocation policy [pdf document].