Communities and Local Government

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• Local authority housing strategy and business plan data
• Overview of local authority housing strategy and business plan data

Housing

Overview of local authority housing strategy and business plan data

Introduction

Annually, a large amount of data (about 3000 items) covering a wide range of housing areas are collected from each of the 354 district local authorities through a set of 2 or 3 regular returns which are traditionally known as the Housing Investment Programme (HIP) returns.

From April 2000, the HIP returns have been changed to become the Housing Strategy Statistical Appendix (HSSA) and the Business Plan Statistical Appendix (BPSA) returns. Since April 2001, the BPSA has been divided into two parts: Annual Monitoring (BPSA-AM) and Future Plans (BPSA-FP). Previously the HIP forms had various different names and contents. The table at the bottom summarises the names used since HIP was introduced in April 1976.

The HSSA is collected from all local authorities, as they are all required to publish a housing strategy. However, if they do not own any stock (LSVT LAs) and hence do not need subsidy under the Housing Revenue Subsidy Account (HRA) system, then there is no need for a Business Plan. If a non-LSVT local authority has acquired a Fit-for-Purpose HRA Business Plan from their Regional Government Office, it will only need to be submitted as and when there is a significant update of the BP although some authorities continue to do so to keep themselves on top of their situation.

Note: another large scale housing statistics data collection relating to local authority and Registered Social Landlords (RSLs) is being planned (see NROSH below) which will include some of the data collected in HSSA and BPSA. When this system is established, the duplicated data will be removed from the latter two forms.

Purpose and usage

1. As an appendix, the HSSA is a statistical document to support the LA's annual Housing Strategy. Similarly, the BPSAs are required to support the two parts of the LA's Business Plan if it has stock to manage;
2. The majority of the data are used for monitoring and developing housing policies, tracking Communities and Local Government's Public Service Level Agreement or PSA targets eg Low Demand Indicator 1 is based on vacant dwellings, and performance assessments including Comprehensive Performance Assessment or CPA for the Audit Commission;
3. Some of the data are used for funding allocation among the 9 Regions and the LAs within each region (needs indices or allocation formula). These include the housing capital investment funding (normally averaging over £2b per year, currently known as the Regional Housing Pot but previously it was known as the Single Capital Pot or HIP allocation) and the Disabled Facilities Grants (about £100m); and
4. Other uses, including answering Parliamentary Questions, future planning as well for assessing trends and research purposes.

Data contents

Briefly speaking, the data collected can be summarised as follows:

HSSA

Mainly basic and policy orientated data on all tenures within each local authority's own geographical area and covers a wide range of information such as:

• Dwelling Stock and Vacants
• Housing register, Lettings and Homelessness
• Houses in Multiple Occupation
• Capital Expenditure and Receipts, and Cash Incentive Schemes
• Private Sector Housing Renewal Assistance including Disabled Facilities Grants, and Private Sector Clearance.
• Provision of Affordable Housing

BPSA

The BPSA contains information only relating to the local authorities' own stock. The Annual Monitoring part mainly covers information on:

• Dwellings by house type including low or high rise flats and by age
• any dwellings own that are outside their admin area
• Decent Homes delivery
• Detailed information on capital works programme.
• Management and service delivery
• Management and non management vacant dwellings by length of vacant

The Future Plan part contains detailed based and future years information on its stock including expenditure figures and planned programmes for its capital works, and future decent home delivery target dates.

Historic titles of forms

From 2000/01, the HSSA and BPSA replaced the Housing Investment Programme Operational Information (HIP OI) and Annual Plan (HIP AP) forms which were used from 1997/98 to 1999/2000. Before that from April 1976 to March 1997, they were referred to as HIP 1 and HIP 2 respectively but their names varied slightly over the years as indicated in the Table below.

In general, the HIP OI and HIP 1 covered all the non-capital finance or housing situation information currently collected by the HSSA return (eg dwelling stock, Lettings and Homelessness), whereas the HIP AP and HIP 2 collected all the capital finance information currently collected on both the HSSA and the BPSA forms.

Table: Names of HIP Returns since 1976/77:

Year		Form Names
2001/02 - present	Housing Strategy Statistical Appendix (HSSA)		Business Plan Statistical Appendix
			Annual Monitoring (BPSA-AM)		Future Plan (BPSA-FP)
2000/01	Housing Strategy Statistical Appendix (HSSA)		Business Plan Statistical Appendix (BPSA)
1999/2000 - 1997/98	HIP Operational Information (HIP OI)		HIP Annual Plan (HIP AP)
1996/97 -1993/94	Needs Appraisal (HIP 1)		Proposal for Capital Expenditure (HIP 2)
1992/93 - 1988/89	Housing Needs Appraisal (HIP 1)		Proposal for Capital Expenditure (HIP 2)
1987/88 - 1979/1980	Housing Needs Appraisal (HIP 1)		Request for Capital Allocation (HIP 2)
1978/79 - 1976/77	Housing Strategy Appraisal (HIP 1)		Request for Capital Allocation (HIP 2)

Publications

Other than the full set of the raw data that are available under Data, forms and guidance, some of the data are tabulated and published in the set of live data tables and Housing Statistics Annual. Also, some summary data are presented in the Housing Postcard leaflet.

Some of the data are exported to the Neighbourhood Statistics Services (NeSS). See below.

Contacts

• Email : hip.returns@communities.gsi.gov.uk
• Telephone : +44 (0) 20 7944 3323