Housing Needs Assessment 2006 - Westminster City Council

Westminster – Housing Needs Assessment 20063.3 Base figuresThe table below shows an estimate of the current tenure split in the City of Westminster along withthe sample achieved in each group. The data shows that 43.7% of households were owner-occupierswith 22.0% in the social rented sector and around a third in the private rented sector. The privaterented sector includes those living in tied accommodation and those living in accommodationowned by relatives or friends.TenureTable 3.1 Number of households in each tenure groupTotalnumber ofhouseholds% ofhouseholdsNumber ofreturns% of returnsOwner-occupied (no mortgage) 21,668 19.3% 245 20.1%Owner-occupied (with mortgage) 27,451 24.4% 263 21.6%Council 12,197 10.9% 265* 21.8%RSL 12,477 11.1% 152 12.5%Private rented 38,602 34.3% 293 24.1%TOTAL 112,395 100.0% 1,218 100.0%* The sample for council tenants is particularly large, however since the survey has been weighted according to HSSAinformation the weighted survey distribution corrects this imbalance.Source: City of Westminster Housing Needs Survey 2006Survey data was weighted to match the suggested tenure profile shown above. An important aspectof preparing data for analysis is ‘weighting’ it. As can be seen from the table above, social surveyresponses never exactly match the estimated population totals. As a result it is necessary to‘rebalance’ the data to correctly represent the population being analysed.ODPMGuide‘If inconsistencies are found between survey results and benchmark sources, theremay be a case for re-weighting the data in-line with the distribution indicated by thebenchmark source’. [Section 4.2 (page 54)]Data was also weighted to be in line with the estimated number of households in each of variousgroups (along with tenure displayed above):• 20 wards (from Council Tax Register)• Number of people in household (2001 Census)• Household type (2001 Census)• Accommodation type (2001 Census)• Car ownership (2001 Census)• Ethnicity of the household head (2001 Census)PAGE 32