Calculating new housing need
Newly arising need from new households
As well as looking at the backlog of housing need, it is necessary to forecast newly arising need from new households. The most commonly used data source in this respect, is household projections which are provided free of charge by the Welsh Government, However, it is important that the projections you use for your LHMA match those used in your Local Development Plan (LDP).
For the purposes of this training module WG projections will be used. The projections are only available at local authority level and therefore a means of disaggregating these projections to sub local authority level needs to be employed. One way to do this is via Census proportions, although equally justifiable methods include using LDP allocations or survey data.
The projections are based on migration, births, deaths and marriages so can show decline as well as growth in certain household sizes.
More sophisticated approaches can be developed by looking more closely at household ages.
Step 1 – Household projections
Step 2 – Disaggregating projections
Obviously not all newly forming households will be in housing need and it is necessary to estimate how many will need assistance. This involves analysing house price, private rent and social rent levels to determine the need for different tenures. You can use a variety of sources to obtain this data such as Hometrack, commercial websites, surveys of estate and lettings agents, newspapers or CACI Paycheck. The Data Unit have collective purchase agreements for Hometrack and CACI data. For more information please contact ()
Step 3 - Calculating the cost of LCHO and Intermediate rent
This tab shows household income data at the ward level from CACI. Hometrack also contains more limited CACI output. This income data is used to compare with local house prices and market rents rents to help estimate how many newly forming households will be in housing need for LCHO, intermediate rent and social rent.
Step 4 - Calculating the number of new households which will be in housing need
Step 5 - Calculating those priced out of the market
Newly arising need from existing households
Another source of newly arising need is from existing households that were previously housed satisfactorily but have now encountered difficulty.
Ministry of Justice data can be used to show context. However, trends from local authority homelessness presentation data will provide a more realistic basis for estimation over the LHMA period.
Ideally, the areas that different homeless applicants have selected should be used to disaggregate this data to sub local authority level, although Census data can also be used if this information is not collected or available.
More sophisticated approaches can be developed by looking more closely at household ages (especially to estimate the number of single person households aged under 35 in relation to welfare reform).
Step 1 – Ministry of Justice data
Step 2 – Disaggregate to sub local authority level