The number of households waiting for social housing in parts of west London has dropped by more than two-thirds in a year.
The waiting list has been decreasing since 2012, possibly due to the introduction of the Localism Act 2011 which gave councils more power to toughen the criteria as to who qualifies.
In Harrow, the number of households on the council housing waiting list has dropped 81% from 3,676 households in 2013 to 687 in 2014, according to figures from the Department for Communities and Local Government, collated by the Trinity Mirror Data Journalism Unit.
Kensington and Chelsea has seen a 70% drop, from 8,867 in 2013 to 2,677 in 2014, and Hillingdon is down 67% from 10,879 to 3,606.
Across England, the number of households on local authority housing waiting lists dropped by nearly a fifth in 2014.
As of April 1, 2014, there were 1.37 million households on waiting lists, a decrease of 18.8% from the 1.69m on April 1, 2013.
Every local housing authority is required to have an allocation scheme for determining priorities and the procedure to be followed in allocating accommodation. The scheme should give reasonable preference to key vulnerable groups.
