And 45mins after posting the above I got an email from one of the housing sites!
I bid on a 1 bed flat in central Durham, he was in 2nd place so didn’t get it. They asked me to call the office about it, I range and was on hold for 40mins but when I got through they couldn’t get hold of the person I needed to speak to.
She’s going to ring me tomorrow so it looks like he may be in with a chance. He’s not happy about the idea but at least this way he has a secure tenancy in a decent area, I’ll be here to help him get settled and organised and if it doesn’t work out he can always come back here.
Please excuse spelling/typos. Apart from being a clot it turns out I had one on my cerebellum that's now causing various problems!