Folkestone & Hythe Housing Register: The Five-Bedroom “Ghost Queue” Trapping 11 Families

This is a Guest Post

On the Folkestone & Hythe District Council housing register there is a category that, on paper, looks normal. In practice it behaves like a dead end.

There are 11 households currently waiting for a five-bedroom social home in this district. I am one of them. The Council’s own figures show that, in the last year, the number of five-bedroom properties allocated was zero. The “average waiting time” is not even recorded as a number. It is shown as a dash, because the queue does not move.

That is what a “ghost queue” looks like: a list you can sit on indefinitely, while nothing ever happens.

WHAT THE SYSTEM DOES TO US

Being placed in this category is not just slow. It shuts families out.

We are restricted from bidding on smaller four-bedroom homes, even where a sensible adjustment would reduce real harm to children living in overcrowded and unsuitable conditions. I asked for that adjustment. The Council did not respond.

Instead, our priority banding has been downgraded. The rationale, in effect, is that a space below the statutory room-size threshold used in overcrowding standards can be treated as a suitable “bedroom”. So the paperwork says we fit, and the system uses that to justify doing nothing.

This is not an abstract complaint about policy. It is what is happening to my children, right now.

TEN YEARS OF WAITING, AND NO HELP

We have been waiting for a decade. My family has been on the register since 2017. In all that time we have never been assigned a dedicated Housing Officer. Not once. We have had chasing, forms, evidence, and silence.

For years we were trapped in a damp two-bedroom flat with no outside space. The conditions were not merely unpleasant; they were health-harming. Black mould was part of daily life.

When my son, now ten, was a toddler he needed throat surgery (adenoid/tonsillectomy) so he could breathe safely while sleeping. We nursed him through recovery in a room contaminated by mould.

During the pandemic we were required to stay inside that flat day and night. When both my partner and I caught Covid, we were left to cope alone: ill adults, vulnerable children, and an environment that made breathing harder. I will not pretend that period was just “difficult”. It was frightening.

The mould became so severe that I developed angioedema, with swelling so extreme I was barely recognisable. I am disabled. I still spent years sleeping on the floor so my children could have the beds. No family should have to live like that, and no parent should have to choose between their own body and their children’s safety.

THE “CUPBOARD”, THE RAIN ROOM, AND ACCESS NEEDS

We eventually sold what we could to scrape together a deposit for another private rental, simply to escape. We moved because we had to, not because the new home properly met our needs.

Today my ten-year-old autistic son lives in a room of roughly 2m by 2.2m (about 4.4 square metres). That is below the 4.65 square metre threshold used in statutory overcrowding standards to count a room as sleeping accommodation. Because of his needs he cannot share with his sisters, so the practical outcome is that he lives alone in a box.

His sisters, some of whom are also autistic with varying support needs, are forced into overcrowded shared rooms with no space to regulate or recover from sensory overload. This is not “character-building”. It is relentless pressure on children who already have enough to manage.

Downstairs we have what we call “the Rain Room”: a utility room where the ceiling is saturated and water beads and drips. Damp like that breeds mould. We are living with it again, just in a different shape.

I receive PIP for mobility impairment. There is no wet room. My partner has to lift me into the bath. A Tribunal Judge has already described that practice as unsafe. The Council knows this. The risk is recorded. Yet we remain in a situation that is plainly not compatible with disability and family life.

NOT JUST A SHORTAGE: A CHOICE

The Council will say this is simply a crisis of supply. There is certainly a shortage. But shortage does not explain decisions that prioritise easy numbers over real need.

The Council has purchased 44 “affordable” homes at the Risborough Barracks development. That site includes large numbers of three-bedroom houses. This was a moment when the Council could have pursued a genuinely family-sized solution: securing a mix that included larger homes, or exploring options to create a small number of large-family units as part of the purchase strategy.

This district’s five-bedroom list is 11 households long. Eleven. Not an impossible figure. Not a faceless mass. A number small enough to track, understand, and solve with intent.

Instead, the acquisitions focused on one- and two-bedroom homes — higher turnover, easier wins on paper — while the 11 families on the five-bedroom list remain stuck in the category where allocations are recorded as zero and the waiting time is a dash.

That is what makes this feel like a “dead list”. Not because the Council uses the phrase, but because the outcome is the same: families parked out of sight, indefinitely.

WHAT WE ARE ASKING — AND WHY I AM SPEAKING

We are not asking for luxury. We are asking for a safe, suitable home for a disabled family with autistic children — a basic standard that any humane system should treat as non-negotiable.

And I am not speaking only for my family. I am speaking for the ten other households trapped in the same dead-end category, and for families elsewhere who may be placed into “queues” that do not function.

So here are the questions the Council should answer plainly.

Why are 11 households placed into a category where the Council’s own data shows zero allocations? Why are those households restricted from bidding on smaller homes even where a reasonable adjustment would reduce harm? Why is a sub-threshold room treated as “good enough” to justify downgrading priority? Why is a disabled parent left without safe washing access when the risk has already been formally recognised?

And, most importantly: how can any council claim it is helping families if it operates a housing category that, in practice, does not lead to housing?

I am blowing the whistle because silence and patience have not worked. There are 11 families on this list. We are not a rounding error. We are not a statistical inconvenience. We are real people, and our children do not get these years back.

Regards,
one of the “dead list 11”

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The Shepway Vox Team

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