Accredited official statistics

Local authority housing statistics: technical notes 2021-22

Published 26 January 2023

Applies to England

1. Introduction

This document provides technical details on the Local Authority Housing Statistics (LAHS) return, including data collection, processing and publication.

LAHS began as the Housing Investment Programme (HIP) return in the late 1970s, collecting housing related data at a local authority level. Since then, it has gone through multiple iterations and current questions have been part of multiple historical data collections (e.g., Housing Strategy Statistical Appendix - HSSA, Planning Application form P1B, Business Plan Statistical Appendix – BPSA,). The current form of LAHS has existed since 2011-12, with minor additions and changes to the questionnaire over time, including the addition and deletion of questions, to maintain relevance match users’ need for housing data.

These data are used as part of Affordable Housing Supply statistics, Social Housing Letting statistics, and Social Housing Sales and Demolitions statistics.

2. Data collection

The information collected in LAHS is a combination of information as a snapshot and for the whole of the financial year. The snapshot information refers to 31 March at the end of the financial year. For example, in the 2021-22 data collection, this is 31 March 2022. Other information refers to financial years, so for the 2021-22 data collection, the reporting period is 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2022.

The overall response rate for 2021-22 was as follows.

• 308 of the 309 local authorities provided some data for the LAHS return.

• Of these 308, there were 3 local authorities who provided “unfinalised” returns. Local authorities are required to sign off their return to confirm it passes a range of quality checks and these local authorities have not signed off the return.

• Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council did not return any information.

3. Data quality

In 2015, the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) published a regulatory standard for the quality assurance of administrative data. To assess the quality of the data provided for this release, the Department has followed that standard.

The standard is supported with an Administrative Data Quality Assurance Toolkit which provides useful guidance on the practices that can be adopted to assure the quality of the data they utilise. The Local Authority Housing Statistics release is produced by DLUHC based on data provided by Local Authorities. An assessment of the level of risk based on the Quality Assurance Toolkit is as follows:

Statistical Series	Administrative Source	Data Quality Concern	Public Interest	Matrix Classification
Local Authority Housing Statistics	Local authorities’ individual data systems	Medium	Medium	Low Risk [A2]

The publication of Local Authority Housing Statistics can be considered as medium profile, as there has been mainstream media interest, with moderate economic and/or political sensitivity.

The data quality concern is considered low given that the data are checked by providers and is subject to data quality checks prior to publication.

Overall, the Local Authority Housing Statistics have been assessed as A2: Low Risk as it is a source to other publications such as Affordable Housing Supply, Social Housing Sales and Social Housing Lettings.

A full outline of the statistical production process and quality assurance carried out is provided below. Further details are also provided against each of the four areas outlined in the Quality Assurance of Administrative Data (QAAD) Toolkit.

3.1 Statistical production process

LAHS data is collected annually, with consultation on changes to the form via the Central Local Information Partnership Housing (CLIP-H) group. Changes not approved are either adapted, dropped, or undergo a New Burdens Assessment.

The LAHS form opens for collection on DELTA in April, with the form usually published a few weeks in advance. Alongside the LAHS form, LAHS guidance is published on the GOV.UK website. While the form is live, DLUHC will respond to queries from data providers, monitor response rates, and contact data providers to ensure response.

The data set is quality assured in line with the principles set out in the Code of Practice for Statistics. Validation checks exist within the DELTA system, but further validation checks are performed by statisticians in DLUHC. Where queries arise, DLUHC contacts the data providers to seek clarity. If no response, data is either kept, removed, or an imputation is made according to the existing rules or, if these do not apply, an assessment is made from the available information.

The final data set is used to build live tables, with quality assurance comparisons made against previously published data. These live tables are published alongside other Official Statistics publications: Social Housing Sales and Demolitions, Affordable Housing Supply, English Housing Survey, Social Housing Lettings

DLUHC re-opens the DELTA form for revisions between February and March for a few weeks. Data providers are contacted with any remaining queries, and on any new queries arising from re-submitted data. LAHS data are revised following additional quality assurance.

3.2 Operational context and administrative data collection

The LAHS data collection is an annual return and is collected from all lower tier local authorities (including unitary authorities) in England that were in existence over the 2021-22 financial year (309 local authorities). It covers information on social housing owned by local authorities, including information on housing stock, waiting lists and evictions.

The LAHS return contains both mandatory and voluntary questions. Where there are mandatory questions, these should be completed by all local authorities that submit a return. Some authorities may not report data for all voluntary parts of the return. From 2017-18 onwards, the return has been completed by local authorities via the Department’s DELTA system. This system includes multiple data validation rules, including those to ensure mandatory questions are filled, and these rules are continuously reviewed.

Every effort is made to collect data from every local authority but on occasion estimates may be used (see imputation). Where possible, revisions made in these statistics should also be made in the DELTA system, however for historic periods this may not always be possible. This may result in minor discrepancies between DELTA data and the published figures. Care should be taken using data at a local authority level as the totals are low and therefore can be volatile.

There are a number of other sources which contain data related to, or that complements that the data, that presented in LAHS. This includes the English Housing Survey (EHS), COntinuous REcording (CORE), Statistical Data Return (SDR), Annual Right to Buy sales and replacements and the Mortgage and Landlord Possession statistics. Further information is available in the definitions section covering themes on stock, rents, waiting lists, decency and evictions.

The LAHS form is regularly assessed against current and future policy requirements. Where changes are proposed, they are presented to the Central Local Information Partnership Housing (CLIP-H) subgroup for discussion.

3.3 Communication with data supply partners

There are regular contacts with the data suppliers for this release to ensure that there is a common understanding of what information is being supplied.

Communication with suppliers is managed through a number of formats (regular contact with data providers via email or phone both during the data collection or validation checks processes, and throughout the year via the gov.uk website and the Central Local Information Partnership Housing (CLIP-H) sub-group).

The government maintains the Single Data List which is a catalogue of all datasets that local government is required to submit to central government. LAHS is on this list.

3.4 Quality Assurance principles, standards and checks by data suppliers

The Local Authority Housing Statistical data is provided by local authorities and therefore the Department does not have full oversight of their systems and quality procedures. We provide clear guidance and documentation to them via DELTA and online.

Data received by the Department goes through an extensive validation and imputation process.

3.5 Producers’ Quality Assurance investigation and documentation

Whilst providers are expected to carry out their own checks before the data is submitted for this publication, further quality assurance is carried out once the data is received by the responsible statistician for this publication.

The quality assurance process includes sense checks on previous year’s figures, identification of extreme values, cross validation of multiple fields and, where necessary, contacting the data provider for clarification or confirmation of figures.

The data, report and tables are independently quality assured by another statistician in the production team. These checks use a clear checklist approach to ensure the figures are consistent across the release and live tables, with each check being systematically signed off when it has been completed.

3.6 Imputation

All returns undergo validation and cross-checking, and late returns are chased to ensure the overall response is as complete and accurate as possible. Outliers or inconsistent data are highlighted and verified by contacting the local authority. Where the local authority has not responded to the query, an assessment has been made as to the likelihood of the data being correct. Where the figures are deemed highly likely to be incorrect, an imputation has been included for the purposes of producing the regional and national totals, where possible.

Imputations attempt to take into account missing or incorrect data in order to provide national aggregates. This method has been used in the LAHS (and previously Housing Strategy Statistical Appendix (HSSA) and Business Plan Statistical Appendix (BPSA) data) collection process for many years. All national totals reported in this release include imputed data for missing returns.

In general terms, one of five approaches to imputation are taken which are:

• Where figures are not expected to change greatly year on year, direct carry-over of the value reported from the previous year is used.
• Where there are sub-components of other reported items, imputations are calculated from data provided.
• Where we can be confident that financial figures have been filled in using the wrong units from comparison with other authorities, i.e. in pounds rather than thousands of pounds, values are converted to the correct units
• Removal of highly anomalous figures which appear unbelievable. Communication with local authorities to confirm the correct figure is pursued first, but in the absence of a response, some figures may be suppressed or presented as ‘don’t know’.
• Using proportions from previous years, e.g. on waiting lists by bedroom requirement, to predict the proportion for a later year

Imputations are listed within the published tables.

3.7 Additional Quality Assurance

In 2022, additional quality assurance of data from 2004-05 onwards was performed. This included trend analysis to identify potentially anomalous values, and consistency analysis where variables are related to each other. In this process, identified potential errors were flagged to data providers and their responses used to update data values.

Historical data from Section B (sales) will be updated at a later date.

4. Revisions

This policy has been developed in accordance with the UK Statistics Authority Code of Practice for Official statistics and the department’s revisions policy. There are two types of revisions that the policy covers:

4.1 Non-scheduled revisions

Where a substantial error has occurred as a result of the compilation, imputation or dissemination process, the statistical release, live tables and other accompanying releases will be updated with a correction notice as soon as is practical.

4.2 Scheduled revisions

Any revisions made by local authorities to their figures after the DELTA form is closed for editing, due to either errors found in their submission or failure to meet the deadline, will be recorded and will update the tables at next scheduled release or revision.

There is a formal revisions period in February/March 2023 after the publication of full LAHS data in January 2023. The LAHS forms are reopened for editing for a few weeks. The Department inform all authorities when DELTA is open and will further target authorities where the Department knows revisions are due. Revisions will normally only be made to the most recent published year. The revised LAHS returns will be published in summer 2023.

Where LAHS data are published in live tables, these tables will be updated annually at the same time as the publication of this statistical release. The exception to this is when a significant error has been identified as described previously. In this case, these tables will be updated as soon as the error is found, and a note will be placed on the table to notify users of the reason for the change.

Revisions to historic data are performed occasionally alongside scheduled updates to the data. This occurs if a local authority informs DLUHC that values should be revised, or if DLUHC undergoes a more detailed quality assurance process, such as that reflected in the January 2023 update. The LAHS open data reflects the most up to date data.

4.3 Revisions in this release

Following a comprehensive checking process, DLUHC contacted local authority housing officers where values seemed unlikely given previous submitted values. Checks were performed to flag large year on year changes in variables such as those for stock count, number of right to buy sales, waiting list size, number of lettings, number of vacant stock, number of non-decent stock and rent arrears.

Further consistency checks between variables, such as related variables for non-decent stock and financial contributions from s106 agreements were also performed to ensure values added up.

In addition, as a one-off exercise, data covering 2004 to 2011 was also reviewed. Potential issues were identified, and DLUHC contacted local authority housing officers to check whether revised data would be possible to obtain. For some variables ^{[footnote 1]}, anomaly detection was performed to identify potential errors. Data which lay significantly outside the confidence limits of a fitted regression line were flagged. For variables which would be expected to add up to each other, cases where this did not occur were also identified as potential issues.

Revised values from this exercise have been incorporated into the data.

5. Definitions and related statistics

A full list of housing statistics and English Housing Survey definitions can be found at Housing Statistics and English Housing Survey glossary.

5.1 Housing stock data

See further information on Notes and definitions for housing stock data.

This information explains the different data sources used to calculate total stock figures for England and stock figures by tenure, as well as the associated data sources.

For total local authority stock figures, LAHS is the preferred data source. Live Table 116 provides the number of local authority dwellings in each LA district by tenure for dwelling equivalent stock. The Local Authority Data Return (LADR) also reports on all stock.

Social housing stock in an area is made up of local authority owned stock and stock owned by Private Registered Providers. The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) took over responsibility for the regulation of social housing providers in England on 1 April 2012. In 2018 the HCA was split into the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) and Homes England (HE). The Statistical Data Return (SDR) is the preferred data source for figures on dwellings owned by Private Registered Providers.

Further information about local authority large scale volume transfer (LSVT) to Private Registered Providers can be found in the National Archives.

Further information and data about Right to Buy and other sales of social stock can be found in the relevant Live Tables

5.2 Waiting lists

The English Housing Survey (EHS) asks questions on the number of households on housing waiting lists. The numbers reported by households on the EHS are much lower than those reported by local authorities on the LAHS return. See the EHS household report, chapter 3.

There are a number of potential reasons for this such as, households may apply to multiple local authorities and households may remain in local authority’s systems after their housing need has ended. The latter can occur due to the periodic nature of authorities cleaning of their waiting lists and where the authority has not been involved in ending of the housing need.

5.3 Social lettings data

Local authority lettings information is reported on the LAHS return, and most local authorities, as well as all Private Registered Providers, also report information on the Continuous Recording of Lettings and Sales (CORE) data collection system.

The latest statistical release provides information on lettings of social housing in England up to September 2021 by local authorities and Private Registered Providers.

LAHS figures on lettings often differ from those in Social Lettings data due to methodological differences in data collection and processing. For examples, LAHS counts mutual exchanges in its total lettings whereas Social Lettings does not. In addition, since CORE is a case level data collection, limited response rates mean that it does not reflect every single letting within a local authority.

5.4 Decent homes

In 2001 government established the decent homes standard for all social housing which is set out in the decent home guidance, updated in 2006.

Local authorities report information on decent homes activity through the LAHS return. Private Registered Providers report similar information through the RSH’s SDR. In the LAHS return, non-decent local authority housing stock includes stock owned by local authorities in other areas.

Estimates on the numbers of non-decent homes are also available from the English Housing Survey.

Decent homes figures from different sources are summarised in live table 119.

Reported levels of decent homes have been consistently lower in LAHS than EHS. There are a number of reasons for this. For example, EHS figures are based on a physical inspection of surveyed properties, while in LAHS only properties that LAs have been made aware of are included. Furthermore, in LAHS, properties where the tenant refused work are excluded. LAHS data should be used when accessing the decent homes standard for social housing.

5.5 Evictions

The Ministry of Justice publishes quarterly National Statistics on possession actions issued in county courts by mortgage lenders and social and private landlords in England and Wales. Whilst the LAHS return collects information on the evictions from properties owned by local authority landlords, corresponding information is not collected from Private Registered Providers. Therefore, where a breakdown by type of social landlord is not required, the best source would be the Ministry of Justice’s statistics on possession actions (see table 3 of their statistical tables).

Please note that there are some differences as 1) the Ministry of Justice publishes data on the number of possession claims and number of possession claims leading to an order rather than the number of orders; 2) the information is taken from courts administrative data rather than local authority returns; and 3) the Ministry of Justice’s published tables include both England and Wales.

6. Uses of the data

The data in this Statistical Release are important for a number of different purposes. They meet the requirements of informed decision-making by the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, other government departments, local authorities, other public services, business, researchers and the public. The data collected on the LAHS form provide an important part of the evidence base for the assessment of future housing requirements and are used to inform evidence-based policy decisions and as a basis for answering Parliamentary Questions and other requests for information by Ministers, local authorities and the general public.

LAHS data is used as a data source for other statistical releases by DLUHC and other government departments.

7. User engagement

Users are encouraged to provide feedback on how these statistics are used and how well they meet user needs. Comments on any issues relating to this statistical release are welcomed and encouraged. Responses should be addressed to the “Public enquiries” contact given in the “Enquiries” section below. The Department has published an engagement strategy to meet the needs of statistics users.

8. Devolved administration statistics

Statistics relating to social housing stock in the other UK countries are published by the devolved administrations. In all countries, data are collected from returns made by the stock owning authority (local authority, Private Registered Provider or equivalent).

Statistics on social housing for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are published on their respective websites.

There are a number of differences between the statistics that are collected and published for local authorities in England through the LAHS return and the other UK countries. These differences can arise for a number of reasons, but the majority are a result of different legislation, methodology or coverage.

9. Enquiries

Media enquiries: 0303 444 1209

Email: newsdesk@levellingup.gov.uk

Public enquiries and Responsible Statistician: Alistair Rice

Email: housing.statistics@levellingup.gov.uk

Information on Official Statistics is available via the UK Statistics Authority website.

Information about statistics at DLUHC is available via the Department’s website.

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