1. Accredited Official Statistics status

These official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in December 2011. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled ‘accredited official statistics’ ^{[footnote 1]}.

2. Introduction

This page contains technical information about the Local Authority Housing Statistics (LAHS) return, including its 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, LAHS has gone through multiple iterations, with some questions having been merged with other historical data collections (e.g., Housing Strategy Statistical Appendix - HSSA,  Business Plan Statistical Appendix – BPSA, Planning Application form P1B). The current version of LAHS has existed since 2011-12, with changes and updates made since then to maintain relevance and meet user needs for housing data.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG) uses the data collected in LAHS in several other statistical releases:

• Affordable housing supply statistics

• Social housing lettings statistics

• Social housing sales and demolitions statistics

3. Data collection

Some of the data collected in LAHS refers to local authority housing on 31 March at the end of the financial year, while other questions relate to changes throughout the whole financial year. For example, in the 2023-24 data collection, some information refers to 31 March 2024, while other parts relate to the period from 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024.

Local authorities are required to sign off their return to confirm it passes a range of quality checks. All 296 local authorities provided some data for the 2023-24 LAHS return. Of these 296 authorities, only one provided an “unfinalised” return, meaning their return was completed but it failed certain quality checks.

Further information on the data collection process can be found in the following sections.

4. Data quality

4.1 Assessment of data quality

In 2015, the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) published a regulatory standard for the quality assurance of administrative data. The standard is supported with a Quality Assurance of Administrative Data Toolkit which contains guidance for producers of official statistics on practices they can adopt to assure the quality of the data they utilise.

The department has followed this standard to assess the quality of the data provided for this release. The responsible statistician’s assessment of the level of risk associated with these statistics 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	Medium Risk [A2]

The publication of LAHS can be considered as medium profile, as there has been mainstream media interest, with moderate economic or political sensitivity. The data quality concern is considered medium given that the data is subject to extensive data quality checks prior to publication, although the volume of responses means it is not always possible to resolve all issues. Therefore, LAHS has been assessed as A2: Medium Risk overall.

A detailed assessment against each of the four areas outlined in the Quality Assurance of Administrative Data Toolkit is provided below.

Operational context and administrative data collection

LAHS is an annual return and is collected from all lower tier local authorities (including unitary authorities) in England that existed during the relevant financial year (296 local authorities in 2023-24). It covers information on social housing owned by local authorities, including housing stock, housing registers, housing condition and evictions.

LAHS is part of the Single Data List, a record of all the datasets that local government must submit to central government. As such, any changes to the form are subject to consultation via the Central Local Information Partnership Housing (CLIP-H) group. Where needed, changes to the form are subject to a New Burdens Assessment.

The LAHS form is regularly assessed against current and future policy requirements. Where changes are proposed, they are presented to the CLIP-H sub-group for discussion.

The LAHS return contains both mandatory and voluntary questions. Mandatory questions should be completed by all local authorities, whereas authorities can choose whether to report data for voluntary parts of the return.

Some parts of the form are only returned by local authorities with a Housing Revenue Account (HRA). Any local housing authority that owns 200 or more social dwellings is required to account for these dwellings within an HRA. As of March 2024, there were 162 local authorities with an HRA, with HRA housing accounting for over 99% of local authority dwelling stock (as recorded in Section A of LAHS).

From the 2017-18 return onwards, the LAHS return has been completed by local authorities on the department’s DELTA data collection platform.

The submission window for LAHS opens on DELTA in April of each year, with the form published a few weeks in advance. Alongside the form, we publish LAHS guidance on the GOV.UK website. While the form is live, we respond to queries from data providers, monitor response rates, and contact data providers to ensure accurate and timely submissions.

The data is quality assured in line with the principles set out in the Code of Practice for Statistics. Validation checks exist within the DELTA system at the point the data is collected, and further validation checks are performed by statisticians in MHCLG once the data are submitted. Where queries arise, MHCLG statisticians contact the data providers to seek clarification or corrections to the data. If no response is provided, the data is either left as submitted, suppressed, or an imputation is made. Suppressions and imputations are marked as such in the published statistics.

Please see the revisions section later in these technical notes for information about how revisions to the data are handled for the LAHS data collection.

Communication with data supply partners

Statisticians are in regular contact with the data suppliers for this release to ensure they have a common understanding of the information supplied. This communication happens through a range of channels, including:

• Direct contact with data providers via email and phone during the data collection and validation periods

• The LAHS webpage on the GOV.UK website

• The GOV.UK Notify system

• The Central Local Information Partnership Housing (CLIP-H) group

Quality assurance principles, standards and checks by data suppliers

LAHS data are provided by local authorities and therefore MHCLG does not have oversight of their systems and quality procedures. The department provides local authorities with detailed guidance on the information collected through LAHS, which is available on both the GOV.UK website and the DELTA platform where the data is collected.

Producers’ Quality Assurance investigation and documentation

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

• Sense checks on the latest data against previous years to identify significant and unexpected changes

• Identification of extreme values

• Cross-validation of related fields, for example to ensure that constituent fields sum to a total provided

• Where identified issues are not otherwise explained in comments left by data providers, directly contacting the data provider for clarification or confirmation of figures

The statistics are independently quality assured by another statistician in the production team. Appropriate caveats and commentary are provided alongside the statistics where the quality of the data is limited or careful interpretation is needed.

Where a local authority has not responded to a data query after submission, an assessment is made as to the likelihood of the data being correct. Where the figures are deemed highly likely to be incorrect, an imputation is made for the purposes of producing regional and national totals, where possible. Please see the imputations section later in these technical notes for information about how these cases are handled.

In 2022, statisticians carried out an additional one-off quality assurance exercise for data covering the period from 2004-05 onwards. 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.

4.2 Things to note on this release

There are several changes in this release of data (February 2025). The changes made to  the 2023-24 LAHS return are:

• Questions e3 and e4 regarding vacant dwellings were made mandatory.

• Questions a5 and f12 on private sector demolitions and housing improvement respectively were removed.

• New voluntary questions were added regarding assessment methods against the Decent Homes Standard.

• New voluntary questions were added regarding the demographics of households on housing registers (or waiting lists). Further detail is provided later in this section.

The changes to the historical data are:

• The number of Right to Buy applications within each local authority is now available in the open data between 1998-99 and 2010-11 (variable b1a).

• The number of Right to Buy sales which were flats within each local authority is now available in the open data between 1996-97 to 2007-08 (variable b2faaa).

4.3 General notes on data quality and definitions

Detailed definitions of the information collected in LAHS can be found in the guidance for data providers associated with this release.

A more general list of housing statistics definitions can be found in the Housing Statistics and English Housing Survey glossary.

Housing registers (or social housing waiting lists) (Section C)

In LAHS, the number of households on local authority housing registers (commonly known as social housing waiting lists) is not the same as the number of households waiting for social housing. Local authorities periodically review their registers to remove households who no longer require housing, and the frequency of these reviews varies between local authorities. In addition, some households may be counted on the housing register of more than one local authority. It is therefore likely that the total number of households on housing registers will overstate the number of households who still require social housing at any one time.

The number of households on local authority housing registers over time can be found in Live Table 600. The introduction of choice-based approaches in 2003, where applicants have more choice about where they live, contributed to a rise in the number of households on housing registers. The Localism Act 2011, has contributed to a decrease in the number of households on housing registers, as it allowed local authorities to set their own qualification criteria.

Commentary on the number of households on housing registers and other statistics related to the allocation of social housing using LAHS data can be found in the Social housing lettings release.

In the 2023-24 LAHS return, the department introduced a set of voluntary questions on the characteristics of households on local authority housing registers.

These new voluntary questions were only answered by some local authorities, and in some cases for only a subset of the households on their housing register. As such, the data presented is incomplete and may not be representative of all households on housing registers across England as a whole.

The table below shows the percentage of households and local authorities for which we have complete data, out of a total 1.33 million on the waiting list at 31 March 2024, for each category of the new voluntary questions.

Household category	% of households on housing registers with complete information	% of 296 local authorities returning complete information
Whether lead applicant is subject to immigration control	10%	18%
Whether household includes children	36%	44%
Whether household includes care leavers	20%	27%
Nationality of lead applicant	16%	22%
Whether household is on the waiting list for accessible homes because their existing homes do not meet their needs	23%	23%

In the Social Housing Lettings release, the number of households on the housing registers in each of these categories is presented as a percentage of those for which complete information was returned by the local authority. Those households for which only partial information was provided are excluded from these calculations, to avoid underestimating the true proportions.

Individual local authority responses are published only for the number of households on housing registers including children in Section C of LAHS. Due to the limited data quality of the responses to the other voluntary questions, only the national proportion is published in the Social housing lettings release.

Decent homes (Section F)

The regional and England level percentages of non-decency in question f17a exclude any local authorities where information on stock was reported but data on non-decency was not. In January 2022, the methodology was further updated to exclude cases where zero decent stock was reported, as it was not fully possible to distinguish between a genuine zero and a non-response in most cases. Therefore, the values under question f17a in the original LAHS tables prior to 2019-20 are not comparable with the same question in subsequent returns. For a comparable England time series, please use Live Table 119. In addition, the denominator for this percentage calculation will occasionally include a small number of shared ownership dwellings, which are not assessed under the Decent Homes Standard.

From June 2024, we have used a new methodology to calculate percentage of stock failing the HHSRS, to make use of as much of the information provided by local authorities as possible and maximise the accuracy of the statistics at England level.

To calculate this percentage, the numerator remains the number of dwellings with category 1 hazards (f16aa) for all local authorities that provided this data (including zeroes), while the denominator is now defined differently. Previously, the denominator consisted of the local authority stock (as reported by LAHS variable a2ia from 2011-12 onwards and a1a prior) for all local authorities that reported figures (greater than zero) for non-decency (i.e. f13e > 0). However, in some cases, local authorities have reported a figure for dwellings with category 1 hazards (in question f16aa of LAHS), but no corresponding total of non-decent dwellings in f13e, or vice versa. Figures for these local authorities would previously have been excluded from the percentage calculation. To make use of this information in calculating percentage of stock failing the HHSRS, the denominator now consists of local authority stock for all those local authorities that reported figures for either non-decency (f13e > 0) or for dwellings with category 1 hazards (f16aa > 0). Please note this denominator includes a very small number of shared ownership dwellings (less than 0.5% in 2023-24), which are not assessed under the Decent Homes Standard.

Lettings (Section D)

We are aware of a small number of local authorities having reported more lettings than stock in some older years (d10a > a2ia or d10a > a1a). In more recent years, these are apparent discrepancies due to mergers or mid-year large stock value transfers or may include local authorities that do not have a Housing Revenue Account and should not have completed the question. We will address these issues in the June 2025 revisions.

Vacants (Section E)

There are some key details on the vacants information collected in Section E:

• The definition used for ‘vacant’ in question e2 is consistent with the one used to complete the Council Tax Base form. Vacant dwellings are counted under the definition of a dwelling used for Questions 2 to 4 in Section A. That is, it relates to dwellings within the local authority’s Housing Revenue Account.

• The sum of the sub-categories in questions e2 and e3 may be different from the total in some cases, due to partial responses to these questions. Question e3 was introduced as a voluntary question in 2022-23 and made mandatory from 2023-24 onwards.

• We are aware of a small number of cases where the sum of the sub-categories of vacant dwellings in questions e2 with regards to availability for letting is inconsistent with the same sub-categories in question e3. We have decided to leave the data as reported in these cases, because 2022-23 was the first year question e3 was collected and was on a voluntary basis. This question was made mandatory in 2023-24.

Net supply of affordable housing (Section K)

Section K was introduced as voluntary in 2021-22 and was made mandatory in 2022-23.

We are aware of discrepancies between the data provided in Sections A and B, and the data provided in Section K. We continue to query these discrepancies with the relevant local authorities and issue corrections when provided in sufficient time before this statistical release.

Historical data

Data prior to 2011-12 is based on historical returns using late-1990s geography and may be more prone to errors.

This data may also differ from previously published figures as previous imputation and weighting was removed and they are instead presented consistently with current imputation rules for the number of households on housing registers.

See historical data on Right to Buy sales and other losses to social housing.

Relevant differences in definitions are noted in the appropriate tables.

Known issues concerning specific local authorities

Some of the key local authority specific issues with LAHS data include:

• Bradford was exceptionally permitted to hold more than 200 homes outside of a Housing Revenue Account (HRA) while they work to set up a solvent HRA from 2023-24. The council Executive approved the adoption of a new HRA on 1 November 2022 and Bradford’s HRA opened from 1 April 2023 and is now reflected in the council’s 2023-24 LAHS return. This meant that while they reported more than 200 homes in their stock figures between 2016-17 and 2022-23, because they did not have an HRA, most of their LAHS return is marked as ‘not applicable’.

• Sandwell Metropolitan Council’s reported values for non-decent stock between 2017-18 and 2021-22 were suppressed in June 2023 at their request due to concerns about the accuracy of previously submitted values. The council has since started a programme of stock condition surveys and has reported the number of non-decent dwellings on the basis of those properties surveyed so far.

• From 31 March 2021, Telford & Wrekin Council no longer operates a housing register. It makes nominations to local housing providers from its Nomination Pool. The council continues to work in partnership with local housing association providers in the borough through the local Social Housing Forum. This means that their return in Section C is mostly marked as ‘[x] = data missing or unavailable’.

5. Related statistics by topic

There are a number of statistical releases using LAHS data or that are otherwise related:

• The English Housing Survey (EHS)

• COntinuous REcording of Lettings and Sales (CORE)

• The Regulator for Social Housing (RSH) Statistical Data Return (SDR)

• Right to Buy sales and replacements

• Mortgage and Landlord Possession statistics

Further detail on these statistics by topic can be found below.

5.1 Local authority housing stock

MHCLG publishes notes and definitions for housing stock data which explains the different data sources used to calculate housing stock figures for England by tenure.

For total local authority stock figures, LAHS and Live Table 116 provide the number of local authority dwellings in each local authority district for dwelling equivalent stock. Whereas the Local Authority Data Return (LADR) reports on local authority housing stock within the remit of the Regulator of Social Housing.

Social housing is made up of stock owned by local authorities and stock owned by Private Registered Providers. The SDR is the preferred data source for figures on dwellings owned by Private Registered Providers.

Further information about Large Scale Voluntary Transfer (LSVT) of housing stock from local authorities 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 Housing registers (or social housing waiting lists)

The EHS also records the number of households on housing waiting lists. The numbers of households on housing registers in the EHS are much lower than those reported by local authorities on the LAHS return. In addition to the reasons provided above regarding the overcounting of households on housing registers in LAHS, this may also be because the EHS only surveys a single household reference person, who may not know whether everyone in the household is on a housing register at the time.

Commentary on the number of households on housing registers and other statistics related to the allocation of social housing using LAHS data can be found in the Social housing lettings release.

5.3 Social housing lettings

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 CORE data collection system.

The latest statistical release provides information on lettings of social housing in England up to March 2024 by local authorities and Private Registered Providers.

LAHS figures on lettings often differ from those in the CORE data due to methodological differences in data collection and processing. For example, LAHS counts mutual exchanges in its total lettings (where existing tenants agree to swap homes) whereas social housing lettings recorded in CORE do not. In addition, since CORE is a case-level data collection, limited response rates mean it does not reflect every single letting within a local authority.

5.4 Decent homes

In 2001, the government established the Decent Homes Standard for all social housing. This was updated in 2006. A decent home is defined as one that meets all of the following four criteria: a) meets the current statutory minimum standard for housing (from April 2006 the Fitness standard was replaced by the Housing Health and Safety Rating system (HHSRS)); b) is in a reasonable state of repair; c) has reasonably modern facilities and services; d) provides a reasonable degree of thermal comfort.

There are various measures of rates of non-decency from different data sources, with some overlap. These are described in detail in Live Table 119.

The EHS contains estimates of non-decent stock for both local authority landlords (which overlaps with the LAHS figures) and housing associations (which overlaps with the SDR figures). The LAHS and SDR figures for non-decent homes are based on the number of properties that providers are directly aware of, which will vary depending on the number of stock condition surveys completed, and do not include cases where tenants have refused improvement work. In contrast, the EHS figures are based on a physical inspection of a random sample of the whole housing stock. Landlords may not be aware of properties identified by EHS surveyors as non-decent. Reported rates of non-decent homes have therefore been consistently lower in LAHS and the SDR than in the EHS.

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 differences because:

• 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

• the information is taken from courts administrative data rather than local authority returns

• the Ministry of Justice’s published tables include both England and Wales.

6. Uses of the data

LAHS data is used in a number of ways:

• to inform central government policy on housing

• to inform local authorities’ housing strategy and management of housing stock

• to evaluate the quality and value for money of public services and public bodies

• to respond to parliamentary questions and public enquiries

• to calculate the New Homes Bonus enhancement when combined with other statistics on the supply of affordable housing

7. Revisions

This policy has been developed in accordance with the UKSA Code of Practice for Statistics and MHCLG’s revisions policy. There are two types of revisions that the policy covers.

7.1 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.

7.2 Scheduled revisions

MHCLG re-opens the DELTA form for three weeks between February and March to allow data providers to make revisions to their original submissions. Data providers are then contacted with any new queries arising from revised data.

Where possible, local authorities are encouraged to make revisions to their data directly in the DELTA system during the original submission window or during the designated revisions period the following calendar year. However, this may not always be possible for previous returns or in between submission windows. In these cases, corrections are agreed with the data provider through correspondence and implemented through the department’s internal systems, and published in the next scheduled release where time allows. This can result in discrepancies between data held on the DELTA system and the figures published each year. For the February 2025 publication of the 2023-24 LAHS returns, corrections received after the cutoff date of 25 October 2024 will instead be processed alongside the revisions for 2023-24 data to be published in June/July 2025.

Revisions to historical data are occasionally carried out alongside scheduled updates to the data where necessary. The LAHS open data always reflects the most up to date record of historical data.

From 2018-19, following a public consultation, the department has discontinued the statistical bulletin associated with the LAHS collection. Commentary on the data is instead included in other statistical releases, with relevant sections of the LAHS return published alongside them.

8. Imputations

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

• Where figures are not expected to change greatly year on year, the value reported from the previous year is carried over.

• Where information has been provided under the sub-categories for a particular question, 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 are inconsistent with other data (either from that year or previous years). 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 non-response. This is only done in exceptional cases or at the request of the data provider.

• Pro-rata a total across various sub-categories using proportions seen in previous years

Any imputations made are listed within the published statistical tables.

9. 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 should be addressed to the “Public enquiries” contact given in the “Enquiries” section below.

MHCLG has an engagement strategy to meet the needs of statistics users.

10. Devolved administration statistics

Statistics relating to social housing in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are published by the devolved administrations.

There are a number of differences between the statistics for local authorities in England in LAHS and the statistics in the other UK nations, mainly because of legislation, methodology and coverage.

11. Enquiries

Media enquiries: 0303 444 1209

Email: newsdesk@communities.gov.uk

Public enquiries and Responsible Statistician: Stanley Rudkin

Email: housing.statistics@communities.gov.uk

Information on official statistics is available via the UKSA website.

Information about statistics at MHCLG is available via the department’s website.