National statistics

Local authority registered provider social housing stock in England summary

Published 25 October 2022

Applies to England

Introduction

Local authority registered provider social housing stock in England – outlines the stock and rents units owned and managed by LARPs.

These statistics are based on data we collect through the local authority data return.

The data is published in a single briefing note and is supplemented by technical notes and definitions and data quality and methodology notes. These notes provide additional information on our data collection and cleansing processes, key limitations with the data and provide additional context for the statistics presented.

Additional tables and data are also available with tools allowing for the interrogation of the data.

Coverage

These statistics provide information on social housing owned by all local authority registered providers at 31 March each year. Unless otherwise stated, all figures in this document refer to stock located in England. The definitions used within the release are consistent with the way data was collected each year.

National Statistics status

Following a compliance check in February 2021 by the Office for Statistics Regulation, which considered the Regulator of Social Housing’s work to maintain the quality of the statistics through the transfer of responsibility for the data collection and production of local authority social housing stock and rent statistics from the, then, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to RSH, these statistics continue to be designated as National Statistics. For more information see the data quality and methodology note.

Key facts

On 31 March 2022:

1.57m units of social stock owned by LARPs

• Local authority registered providers reported owning 1,569,984 units of social stock on 31 March 2022 (including low cost rental and low cost home ownership units).

91% of social stock is general needs

• The majority of stock owned by LARPs is general needs low cost rental (1,457,229 units). The majority of this (1,428,026 or 98%) is social rent, with the remaining 2% being Affordable Rent.

 0.4% reduction in low cost rental stock

• Since 2021 the number of low cost rental units (including Affordable Rent) owned by LARPs has decreased by 6,375 units. A loss of 9,387 social rent units was offset by an increase of 3,030 Affordable Rent.

Social rents increase by 1.7% for general needs and 1.1% for supported housing

• Average general needs (social rent) weekly net rents increased by 1.7%, while supported housing (social rent) weekly net rents increased by 1.1% between 2021 and 2022.

Notes

Background

These statistics are based on data gathered in the Local Authority Data Return survey. We introduced this survey in 2020 to collect data that we believed was included in the LARPs administrative or management systems. We consult with LARPs to ascertain which data items were present in systems and worked to minimise the overall burden placed on data providers requesting data already collected.

We use the LADR data extensively as a source of administrative data to inform our operational approach to regulating the rents (see data quality and methodology note for more details). The United Kingdom Statistics Authority encourages public bodies to use administrative data for statistical purposes, as such, we have published these data since 2020.

Removing the collection of dwelling equivalents from LADR

When the LADR collection was created in 2019, it took questions from the existing Local Authority Housing Statistics and replicated these in order to maintain the timeseries for data publication. Since then, we have sought to improve the quality of the data returned to us through the LADR and from 1 April 2022 we ceased the collection of dwelling equivalent counts for non-self-contained units. This was an area which had caused significant confusion, and which had been reported as having resulted in errors in previous years’ submissions. Before removal we sought feedback on the loss of this information but received no responses which indicated that the loss of this data would pose any issues for the users of these statistics.

The impact of this was minimal (in 2021 we calculated that low cost rental non-self-contained unit total across England was 2,847 units (0.2%) greater using bedspaces than when using the dwelling equivalent value). For more information, please see the additional tables published with the 2021 data, the data quality and methodology notes or the more detailed note as published in 2021 exploring the impact of this proposed change available on our LARP statistics page.

Governance of data and statistics at RSH

The statistician responsible for the publication of these statistics is also responsible for the LADR data collection and the cleansing of incoming LADR data, working with LAs to directly address anomalies within the data submissions and producing the final data set and statistics.

Responsible statistician: Amanda Hall

Queries and feedback: enquiries@rsh.gov.uk or 0300 124 5225.

All LADR data is stored and analysed within password-protected government secure networks and access to the sector level analysis work undertaken on the data is restricted until after publication (LARP level data is accessed by our staff as part of operational work). Further information on the data quality assurance processes we employ is provided in the data quality and methodology note.

Contact information submitted by LARPs in the Entity Level Information section is redacted within the release. This contact information is not publicly available. We hold no other administrative data that can be made available for use in statistics. However, we publish a range of summary data from other information collected. These are available from our website.

More information and full report

The data is published in a single briefing note and is supplemented by technical notes and definitions and data quality and methodology notes. These notes provide additional information on our data collection and cleansing processes, key limitations with the data and provide additional context for the statistics presented.

Additional tables and data are also available with tools allowing for the interrogation of the data.