Accredited official statistics

Local authority registered provider (LARP) social housing stock in England summary

Updated 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 Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) which considered the RSH’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 MHCLG to RSH, these statistics continue to be designated as National Statistics. For more information see the data quality and methodology note.

Key facts

1.58m units of social stock owned by LARPs

• Local authority registered providers reported owning 1,576,370 units of social stock on 31 March 2021 (including low cost rental and low cost home ownership units).

93% of social stock is general needs

• The majority of stock owned by LARPs is general needs low cost rental (1,468,317 units). The majority of this (1,441,412 or 98%) is social rent, with the remaining 2% being Affordable Rent.

0.3% reduction in low cost rental stock

• Since 2020R the number of low cost rental units (including Affordable Rent) owned by LARPs has decreased by 4,308 units. A loss of 8,639 social rent units was offset by an increase of 4,331 Affordable Rent.

Social rents increase by 2.9% for general needs and 2.3% for supported housing

• Average general needs (social rent) weekly net rents increased by 2.9%, while supported housing (social rent) weekly net rents increased by 2.3% between 2020R and 2021.

Notes

Background

These statistics are based on data gathered in the LADR survey. We introduced this survey in 2020 to collects data that we believe is included in the LARPs administrative or management systems. We consult with LARPs to ascertain which data items are present in systems and work 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 publish these data each year.

Data presented in the 2021 release counts non-self-contained units as bed spaces throughout the analysis.

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 Statistic 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. An area which we are aware causes significant confusion, and which has been reported as having resulted in errors in previous years’ submissions, is the collection of the dwelling equivalent count of non-self-contained units.

The dwelling equivalent count is based on a clustering of non-self-contained units to provide an estimate of the number of properties in which bed spaces are present. It is not an accurate count of these properties as it employs a maximum threshold for the number of bed spaces clustered together (which is different depending on whether the bed space is in a hostel or in a house of multiple occupation). We feel that the count does not provide significant insight into the number of non-self-contained units, nor is it comparable with the way in which non-self-contained units are recorded in our other collections.

From 1 April 2022 we intend to cease the dwelling equivalent collection and collect non-self-contained units as bed spaces only across the LADR, ensuring comparability with our private registered provider statistics and meaning no dwelling equivalent data will be published after this publication. If this change, and loss of continuation of the dwelling equivalent timeseries poses significant issues with your analysis then please provide details of the concerns to us as soon as possible and by 31 January 2022 enquiries@rsh.gov.uk.

For more information please see our additional tables, the data quality and methodology notes or the more detailed note 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 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.