National statistics

Social housing sales and demolitions 2020-21

Updated 27 January 2022

Applies to England

This statistical release presents data on the number of social housing dwellings sold and demolished in the period 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021. During this period there were restrictions imposed due to the COVID-19 pandemic which may have affected the number properties that were sold or demolished. The pandemic may have also affected the data quality of the returns provided by registered providers and local authorities, so these data are presented as provisional.

Social housing is defined in the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008 sections 68-77. The term covers Low Cost Rental, Low Cost Home Ownership and accommodation owned by registered providers as previously defined in the Housing Act 1996.

1. Headline figures

In 2020-21 there were

17,262 sales of social housing dwellings, a decrease of 29% compared to 2019-20

12,923 sales of low cost rental dwellings, a decrease of 34% compared to 2019-20

4,339 fully staircased sales of Low Cost Home Ownership dwellings, a decrease of 3% compared to 2019-20

^{[footnote 1]}

3,977 demolitions of social housing dwellings, a decrease of 16% compared to 2019-20

2. Introduction

This statistical release presents National Statistics on annual sales and demolitions of social housing in England. It contains information about the dwellings owned by private registered providers (PRPs) collected by the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) in the Statistical Data Return (SDR) and information about dwellings owned by local authorities collected by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) in the Local Authority Housing Statistics (LAHS). There is also supplementary information provided on initial sales of Shared Ownership properties sourced from the Continuous Recording of Social Housing Sales (CORE Sales) data, collected by DLUHC.

This release is the summary of social housing sales and demolitions, more detailed sections also accompany this release:

• Right to Buy sales (including preserved and voluntary Right to Buy)
• Shared Ownership sales

This release does not report on the overall number of initial sales (first tranche) of Shared Ownership dwellings, but characteristics of these purchases can be found in the Shared Ownership sales release and the various live tables which accompany this statistical release.

3. Related statistics

Affordable Housing Supply in England 2020-21: A statistical release by DLUHC which reports on the number of affordable housing dwellings started and completed from 1 April 2020 – 31 March 2021. These statistics contain information on the number of Shared Ownership dwellings completed, which can be used as a proxy for the number of Shared Ownership dwellings sold in 2020-21. The live tables accompanying this release report on affordable housing supply from 1991-92 to 2020-21.

Private registered provider social housing stock in England: A statistical release by RSH based on data sourced from the Statistical Data Return on an annual basis, it provides details of private registered provider owned and managed stock, details rents reported for low cost rental (social and affordable rents) and provides an overview of the PRP sector including details on stock losses and gains, and vacancies.

Local Authority Housing Statistics: A statistical dataset released by DLUHC which shows the district-level data collected annually from all local authorities. Parts of the dataset are used as a source for this release, but it is also used to report on dwelling stock, condition of stock, rents and arrears and supply of new social housing

Right to Buy sales and replacements: A statistical release by DLUHC which reports on the number of Right to Buy sales^{[footnote 2]} of social housing and the number of properties started or acquired to replace these stock funded through the receipts of these sales. The data is sourced from the Pooling of Capital Receipts return which is collected by DLUHC from all local authorities which have a Housing Revenue Account. Up to the end of 2020-21 this was a quarterly release, but from 2021-22 it is an annual release with quarterly management information published. The 2021-22 annual release is due to be published in June/July 2022.

4. Social housing sales

In 2020-21 there were 17,262 sales of social housing dwellings in England, a decrease of 29% compared to 2019-20. Of these 17,262 sales, 7,164 (42%) were of local authority owned stock and 10,098 (58%) were of stock owned by private registered providers.

Figure 1.1 Total sales of social housing from 1 April 1997 to 31 March 2021, by provider

Social housing can be sold through a variety of different schemes or on the open market. The majority of sales are completed through the Right to Buy of local authority housing and preserved/voluntary Right to Buy of PRP owned housing. These 3 schemes accounted for 54% of sales in 2020-21 and have accounted for 91% of all sales since April 1980.

The next largest contributor to total sales is the 100% staircased sales of Shared Ownership properties. These accounted for 25% of total sales in 2020-21 and, based on the data we have available, accounted for over 10% of all sales since April 2011. Other sales to sitting tenants, which includes Right to Acquire and Social Homebuy, accounted for 5% of sales in 2020-21 while all other sales, including sales to the open market, accounted for 16% of all sales in 2020-21.

Figure 1.2 Total sales of social housing from 1 April 1997 to 31 March 2021, by type of sale

4.1 Social housing sales by region

The number of sales of social housing varies significantly by region and is driven largely by the number of Right to Buy sales. Therefore, changes to the Right to Buy scheme have a large impact on regional variations in sales. For more in-depth analysis of these sales, please see the accompanying Right to Buy document. Due to the variation in stock sizes, the graph below presents sales per 1,000 stock.^{[footnote 3]}

Figure 1.3 Sales of social housing per 1,000 stock from 1 April 2011 to 31 March 2021, by English region

In 2020-21 the total sales per 1,000 stock ranged from 3.3 in East of England to 5.3 in East Midlands, with an average across England of 4.1 sales per 1,000 stock, the lowest since 2012-13, before the reinvigoration^{[footnote 4]} of Right to Buy. Between April 2013 and March 2017, London saw more Right to Buy sales as a proportion of its housing stock than any other region, averaging 8 sales per 1,000 stock in the 4-year period. Since 2017, the East Midlands and West Midlands have seen the most sales as a proportion of stock, driven by the introduction in 2016 of the Voluntary Right to Buy ^{[footnote 5]} pilot scheme in those areas.

Across the regions of England, the main provider of social housing varies substantially, with PRPs having a larger proportion of stock than local authorities in all the regions of England except the East Midlands and Yorkshire and the Humber. However, the proportion of PRP housing stock varies considerably even those regions where it has the majority of stock, for example 52% of social housing stock in London and 86% in the North West is PRP stock. The graph below shows the number of sales by provider type in each of the regions in England.

Figure 1.4 Total sales of social housing from 1 April 2011 to 31 March 2021, by provider and English region

4.2 Demolitions

In 2020-21 there were 3,977 demolitions of social housing dwellings, a decrease of 16% compared to 2019-20. Of these 3,977 demolitions, 1,627 (41%) were of local authority stock and 2,350 (59%) were of PRP stock. These demolitions represent 0.10% and 0.09% of the stock of LAs and PRPs respectively, as at 31 March 2020.

Historically, the number of demolitions of local authority-owned stock was much higher, peaking at just over 14,500 in 2001-02. Since then the trend has been generally downwards, in line with that for demolitions in the social housing sector overall. Demolitions of PRP stock have fluctuated more, and in 2020-21 increased by 6% compared to 2019-20

Figure 1.5: Demolitions of social housing stock, from April 1997 to 31 March 2021 by provider

5. Demolitions by region

Data for demolitions of local authority owned social housing stock is available by region and district since 2011-12. Due to the large variation in the total social housing stock and the type of stock owner in each region, the graph below presents demolitions as a proportion of total stock. It shows that between April 2011 and March 2016 the North East demolished a larger proportion of its total housing stock than all other regions, peaking during 2012-13 with 6.5 demolitions per 1,000 stock.

From April 2016 to March 2021, London has demolished a larger proportion of its stock than any other region, an average of 1.8 demolitions per 1,000 stock in those 5 years. The East Midlands has demolished, proportionally, the least stock, averaging 0.6 demolitions per 1,000 stock between April 2016 and March 2021.

Figure 1.6 Demolitions of social housing per 1,000 stock from 1 April 1997 to 31 March 2021 by English region

6. Comparing sales and demolitions to new supply

This section compares data on sales and demolitions of low cost rental social housing with statistics on new supply of low cost rental dwellings ^{[footnote 6]} provided by local authorities and private registered providers. The sales and demolitions figures do not include 100% staircase Low Cost Home Ownership sales. The figures for new supply are a subset of the total presented in Live Table 1000, and includes not just new build, but also acquisitions of stock that were not previously used as either affordable or social housing. For 2020-21, there were 32,724 new affordable housing for rent, which represented 63% of the total of 52,100 new affordable housing during that year.

While sales and demolitions are expected to be the two main sources of losses to social housing stock, these data do not account for all losses. There are a few reasons for this:

• they only cover sales and demolitions of social housing stock held by local authorities in their Housing Revenue Accounts and stock held by large private registered providers
• they do not cover non-registered providers or those where provider was unknown
• they do not cover all affordable housing intended for sale, such as Shared Ownership
• they do not cover all disposals of existing stock, for example losses through conversions and changes of use

The chart below shows these data since 1997-98. Between 1997-98 and 2008-09, the combined sales and demolitions were consistently higher than new supply of affordable housing for rent. By contrast, in all but 4 of the 12 years since 2008-09, new supply of affordable housing for rent has exceeded losses through sales and demolitions. However, this comparison cannot be used to calculate comprehensive net figures for the supply of affordable housing supply for rent, as not all losses are covered, as explained above.

Figure 1.7 Comparison of sales and demolitions to new supply of low cost rental stock, England 1 April 1997 to 31 March 2021

The change in the pattern was due several factors, including: the decrease in sales since 2003-04; the general decrease in the number of demolitions since 2001-02; and the investments through different affordable homes programmes since 2008.

The source data for this chart is available in live tables 678, 684 and in the affordable housing supply statistics open data.

This is also consistent with trends in stock estimates presented in Live Table 104 which show an increase in the combined local authority and private registered provider stock since 2008. Estimates in that table follow the Census definition of “dwelling” and therefore do not match exactly data on the number of units (which include bedspaces as well as dwellings) available for affordable or social housing, as well as a specific impact of bedspace adjustment estimation methods. We will look further into these differences as more data becomes available.

In April 2021, the department started collecting data from local authorities that is intended to allow more comprehensive net estimates of local authority and private registered providers affordable housing for rent at England level to be calculated, initially for 2020-21. If the data are of sufficient quality, we are aiming to publish it as experimental statistics in the spring or summer 2022. We will continue to investigate with data providers and the Regulator of Social Housing (which collects some of the data used) how to develop these estimates further in future years.

7. Changes to this release

A revision to the local authority Right to Buy between 2006-2020. In previous versions of this statistical release, the data recorded by local authorities in the Pooling of Capital Receipts return (hereafter called “Pooling”) to DLUHC was used as the sole source for local authority Right to Buy sales. The sales recorded in Pooling do not have the same definition as those in LAHS, which came into use in April 2011 and its precursor, the P1B form. Pooling was used as the main source as it had a more complete return than LAHS or P1B, despite not all Right to Buy sales being recorded in Pooling. It was decided for this release to use the values recorded by local authorities in the P1B and LAHS returns as the main source and impute the value from Pooling if there was a missing value in LAHS or P1B. This has led to an increase of 263 sales across England over this 14-year period, with no single year having a larger change than 1.5%.

100% staircased sales of Low Cost Home Ownership dwellings by local authorities have now been included in the data. These sales have only been recorded since 2018-19 for local authorities in LAHS, but are available for private registered providers since 2001-02. The inclusion of these sales adds 103 sales (53 in 2018-19 and 50 in 2019-20) to the previously published England total sales figure. This change was done to reflect the changes made to the PRP sales made in the previous release.

1. Properties previously occupied under relevant Shared Ownership or Low Cost Home Ownership arrangements where the occupier has now acquired a 100% share of the property or repaid an equity loan on a shared equity property in full. ↩

2. These statistics relate only to those sales by local authorities under the Right to Buy scheme which are subject to the Right to Buy receipt pooling requirements. More detail can be found in the definitions section of their technical notes. ↩

3. Stock is reported as at 31 March at the end of the previous financial year. ↩

4. More information on the reinvigoration of the Right to Buy scheme can be found in the accompanying Right to Buy document. ↩

5. In 2016-17, Voluntary Right to Buy (VRtB) was introduced as a small-scale pilot and then widened to a Midlands regional pilot in 2018. This gave the Right to Buy to tenants of private registered providers who previously were not eligible for Preserved Right to Buy. More information can be found in the Voluntary Right to Buy Midlands pilot: evaluation. ↩

6. The term low cost rental is used in these statistics to denote any stock which meets the definition of low cost rental accommodation in the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008. It must be available for rent, with a rent below market value, and in accordance with the rules designed to ensure that it is made available to people whose needs are not adequately served by the commercial housing market. ↩