Same‑sex siblings could indeed be required to share a bedroom until age 20 under Southwark Council’s proposed Housing Allocations Scheme 2026, and the plan also includes creating an additional housing priority band.
Same‑sex siblings share till 20; Band E means “no realistic chance”; the 2013 system gets scrapped after regulatory failings.
Southwark says the new scheme is needed to “rebuild confidence” in how it allocates its scarce social housing and to prove it’s actually meeting its legal duties.
Southwark’s Housing Allocations Scheme sets out who can join the register, how council homes are assigned, and the rules behind every allocation decision.
The new Southwark Housing Allocations Scheme 2026 goes to executive approval next week on 15 September.
If approved, the 2026 scheme will replace the 2013 policy, with a full review scheduled after 12 months.
More than 22,000 households are on Southwark’s Housing Register, and 4,200 are already stuck in temporary accommodation.
In the year ending 31 March 2026, only 6% of households on Southwark’s register were actually allocated a social rented home.
Cllr Reginald Popoola says Southwark’s housing pressures are now “more acute, more complex, and more urgent” than at any point in recent years.
These pressures include rising homelessness, a chronic shortage of genuinely affordable homes, soaring demand for temporary accommodation, and “sustained pressure” on council finances.
Cllr Popoola says these pressures have created a system “difficult for residents to understand and too stretched for officers to administer with the consistency, clarity and pace that applicants rightly expect”.
He added that the council must also respond to a changed legal and regulatory landscape — from new statutory guidance and private‑rented‑sector reforms to the serious concerns raised by the Regulator of Social Housing in its November 2024 judgement.
The government’s social housing watchdog condemned Southwark in 2024 for “serious failings”, saying the existing policy even “prevented prospective tenants from bidding on some available homes”.
Southwark, London’s biggest council landlord, was given a C3 consumer grading — the second‑worst rating — and told it needed to make “significant improvements”.
A council report outlining the proposed changes and recommendations for the new scheme has now been published ahead of next week’s meeting.
Currently, same‑sex siblings share a bedroom up to age 15, but Southwark is proposing to raise the threshold to 20 — meaning children of the same sex could be expected to share until 20 unless medical or welfare evidence shows they need their own room.
Anyone reacting like it’s some shocking new rule probably hasn’t read the piece — the change is simply that same‑sex siblings can be asked to share until 20, and for many families that just means two girls or two boys sharing a room.
However, you’d think things might have moved on since the 1800s — at this rate, give it a minute and they’ll be dusting off the workhouses.
Southwark intends to move care leavers and eligible armed forces applicants into Band A — the highest priority band — giving them the strongest possible position on the Housing Register.
I’m not blaming any specific group — I’m saying the banding rules should be the same for everyone, and right now people with severe health issues can’t even get on the list while others who could privately rent, or who are sitting in homes far bigger than their needs, stay put. Add in the complaints about poor upkeep, and it feels like the whole system is upside‑down.
At 20, young people are working, studying, commuting, exhausted, trying to build relationships, trying to carve out a bit of adulthood — and they need rest, privacy, and personal space. A policy that treats a 20‑year‑old like a child who can “just share a room” is completely detached from reality.
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