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Housing Needs Assessment 2006 - Westminster City Council

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12. Balancing housing markets12.3 Why gross flows cannot predict tenureThe ODPM Guide suggests a Gross Flow approach, which bases forecasts on past patterns, in orderto carry out a BHM. However, given that market dynamics and socio-economic factors are alwayschanging, past patterns are actually fairly limited as a predictor. Past (or even projected future)changes in the proportions of dwelling types and tenure groups are not indicative of what shouldhappen in order to best meet housing requirements in the future. In the jargon, such data has no‘normative’ value: it contains no element of judgement. This was noted by Fordham Research aslong ago as 1993:‘future variation in proportions of owner-occupiers, private renters etc should beconsidered as variables on which policy is to operate in seeking to meet housing need. Inthis sense it is not appropriate to use them as fixed variables’ (Wycombe <strong>Housing</strong> <strong>Needs</strong>Survey, Fordham Research 1993)Examples of why unadjusted gross flows are not a satisfactory predictor are easy to cite:i) If in a local authority area over a period of time (say a year) nothing but four bedroomowner-occupied dwellings are built then the gross flows methodology would show thatnothing but four bedroom owner-occupied homes are required in the future (even if there isa significant need for additional affordable housing).ii) On the other hand another local authority may have needed (and been able) to build asignificant number of additional affordable units, the gross flows approach would indicatethat the Local Authority still required large numbers of affordable housing units (whichmight not be the case).12.4 Adapted Gross Flows (AGF)The Fordham approach, therefore, adapts the notion of balance inherent in Gross Flows to takeaccount of future housing aspirations and affordability as well as past trends. This revised approachhas the advantage of not simply mirroring the past and also helps to avoid any ‘unbalancing’ actionswhich may have been at work.At the most general level:• Demands minus the supply should give a net change (increase usually) in number ofdwellings/householdsPAGE 113

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