Overview of stock, vacants, conversions and demolitions

Stock and Flows

Information on the stock of dwellings by tenure is important for the assessment of current housing supply. It provides a baseline for judging additional supply.

Housing stock is built up from current stock (with census figures as the base) plus any changes due to housing flows such as gains from new completions i.e. house building, conversions and losses due to demolitions.

Information on the changes in stock within local authorities, taking into account new build dwellings and gains and losses through change of use, conversions and demolitions is collected annually by Communities and Local Government from some local authorities through the Housing Flows Reconciliation (HFR) Form and from some Regional Assemblies through a joint return. Since 2004-05, Communities and Local Government has worked jointly with the regional assemblies of London, the East of England, South East and South West to present a consistent view of the level of housing supply for those regions. Joint working is being extended to most other regions in 2008.

For the stock by tenure figures, the sources for the tenure breakdown are:

Local Authorities - from the Housing Strategy Statistical Appendix (HSSA) return
RSLs from - the Housing Corporation's Regulatory Statistical Return (RSR)

The residual from the total stock gives the private sector. The private sector is split between owner occupied and private renters on the basis of the Censuses and, in intervening years, the Labour Force Survey. Total stock figures are available yearly from the HFR and Regional Assembly joint returns, Council Tax records, the HSSA, and ten-yearly from the Census. Currently, HFR and joint return net additions and Census figures are used for this purpose.

Detailed information on the methodology and how all of these figures are calculated is available in the Notes and Definitions for stock data.

House completions data is also collected from the quarterly P2Q returns and National House Building Council (NHBC), but only those from the annual HFR and joint returns are used for stock calculation. Data from the P2Q are used for the House building quarterly Statistical Release only.

Some United Kingdom and international statistics (mainly European Union) are available where the UK and other countries have supplied compatible data.

Vacants

Vacant stock is collected from a variety of sources. At district level, all tenure vacant dwellings including Long Term Vacants (LTV ie empty for over six months) are obtained from Council Tax records and the Business Plan Statistical Appendix (BPSA). The same information for both local authority and private sector tenures is taken from the HSSA. RSL vacants are from the Housing Corporation. Information on long term RSL vacancies are not collected but RSL dwellings not available for rent are used as an approximation for long term vacants.

At regional level, additional information on the age, type and condition of vacant stock is available from the English House Condition Survey (EHCS).

Age of Dwellings/Year Built/Year of Construction

The (banded) year in which residential dwellings were built is captured in the Survey of English Housing (SEH) and features in several SEH live tables. A tabulation of year built by region, based on the SEH, can be found in live table 110. Another source of information on the age of the dwelling stock is the EHCS. Its reports, supporting tables and dataset also provide a breakdown of the stock by age group, dwelling type, location and tenure. However, for live table 110, SEH is preferred to the EHCS as the source because of its larger sample size. It is true that the EHCS is probably more accurate, because the year built is estimated by surveyors and is therefore more reliable than estimates provided by the household. However, since most of the tabulations of year built involve the use of very broad bands of years, the greater accuracy of the EHCS figures is considered less important than the larger SEH sample size. Also, it should be noted that the ONS' General Household Survey also captures information on the age of dwellings - but its sample size is about half that of the SEH.

Apart from the usual range of live tables which include stock in EU countries (Table 112), there is currently no Statistical Release. However, there is a report Assessing the Quality of Data on Housing Flows by the Planning Information Group (PILG) which was published in July 2000. As a result of this, the current HFR return was introduced for 2001/02.

For vacants, currently we only have LA total and management vacants plus RSL, all vacants, both by regions (Tables 611 and 613 respectively).