Applying for a home / moving home

How to register

We work with many councils across Surrey and Sussex. To move home to a smaller or larger home to meet your household requirements, you’ll need to complete an online form. The council will then inform you which band you have been accepted onto. You can then bid for homes available in that band. This is your first step for getting a home or moving home.

All local councils have their own rules about who they will house. For more information, please contact the local council for your area.

If you live within Reigate and Banstead are unable to complete the application form online, then please call their Housing Team on 01737 276000 and make an appointment for an officer to carry out a phone interview to complete the corm. You can then either post photocopied documents to the Town Hall or drop them in to reception.

If you have a general enquiry about renting a home with us, please fill in the enquiry form through your MyRaven online account.

Enquire about renting a home

How we decide

Our Allocations policy works together with the council’s allocations policy so when you are put forward for a Raven home, checks are done to ensure you also meet these policies.

We don’t allocate vacant homes and we don’t manage the housing waiting lists. When we do have a vacant property, we let the Local Authority for that area know. They then either advertise the property for those on the waiting list to bid on or they make direct nominations.

If you feel the nomination that’s been made by your Local Authority is unsuitable or unfair then you need to appeal the nomination with the relevant council. If you have other concerns with the nomination you can make a formal appeal using our complaints procedure.

Moving home within the same Local Authority area to a smaller or larger home, or a home suitable for your needs

You’ll still need to apply to your local council, as mentioned above, if you already live in a Raven home but would like to move to another one of our properties. This could be for a variety of reasons, such as a medical condition or you need more or less bedrooms.

Occasionally, in agreement with a Local Authority, we may be able to move existing Raven customers to a smaller home, if they meet certain criteria. At present we have an agreement with Reigate and Banstead Borough Council whereby we can look to move existing Raven customers to smaller Raven homes, (still within the Reigate and Banstead area) if they’re negatively affected by welfare reform, make their home too expensive.

Waiting lists

We maintain a small waiting list of people who have applied directly to us but we are only able to offer a handful of homes each year to applicants from this list. We use this list if local councils are unable to nominate a suitable candidate for an empty home. However, it’s important to note that this is rare and people on our list could be waiting more than five years for a home.

If you would like to register for our direct waiting list, please download and complete this form:

Direct list application form

In addition, we own approximately 70 homes in East Grinstead where we do not take nominations from the local council. Even though these homes do not become available very often, we do have a small waiting list for these for people who meet the criteria. If you would like to register your interest, please contact us to get in touch and we will send you an application form for completion and return.