Accredited official statistics

Registered providers social housing stock and rents in England - Summary (key facts)

Published 29 October 2024

Applies to England

Introduction

Registered provider social housing stock in England – outlines the stock and rents units owned and managed by RPs.

These statistics are based on data we collect through the local authority data return and statistical data return. Data from these collections are presented separately in our other statistics.

The data are 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 are also available with tools allowing for the interrogation of the data.

Coverage

These statistics provide information on social housing owned by all RPs 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.

Accredited Official Statistics status

These statistics are considered by the United Kingdom Statistics Authority (UKSA) regulatory arm (the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR)) to have met the highest standards of trustworthiness, quality and public value, and are considered an accredited official statistic (this designation replaces the former National Statistic designation). For more information see the data quality and methodology note.

Key facts

On 31 March 2024:

4.5m units of social stock owned by RPs

  • PRPs own 2.9m units compared to 1.6m units owned by LARPs.

83% of social stock is general needs

  • Most social stock owned by RPs is general needs low cost rental (including Affordable Rent) (83% or 3.7 million units). Proportionally more LARP owned stock is general needs (93%) than PRP owned stock (77%).

1% increase in overall stock since 2023

  • This overall increase has been driven by the 24,756 unit increase in Affordable Rent units and the 17,275 unit increase in low cost home ownership units. There was also a smaller increase of 696 social rent units.

7.2% increase in average general needs (social rent) net rents since 2023

  • England general needs (social rent) average weekly net rents increased by 7.2% (or £7.06) between 2023 and 2024, while supported housing (social rent) average weekly net rents increased by 8.9% (or £8.50).

Notes

Background

These statistics are based on data gathered in the Local Authority Data Return and the Statistical Data Return survey.

We use the LADR and SDR data extensively as a source of administrative data to inform our operational approach to regulation (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 annually.

Governance of data and statistics at RSH

The statistician responsible for the publication of these statistics is also responsible for the LADR and SDR data collections and the cleansing of incoming data, working with RPs 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 data is stored and analysed within secure networks and access to the sector level analysis work undertaken on the data is restricted until after publication (RP 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 RPs in the Entity Level Information sections of the surveys 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 (www.gov.uk/rsh).

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