Housing Needs Assessment 2006 - Westminster City Council

9. Supply of affordable housing9. Supply of affordable housing9.1 IntroductionThis chapter looks at current supply of affordable housing from both the Council and RSLs in theCity. We shall begin by highlighting the general patterns of supply in the social rented stock overthe past three years before making a judgement about which supply figures should feature as part ofthe needs assessment model.ODPMGuide‘The most important source of supply is typically relets of existing social housing. Abasic projection should assume continuance of the same rate of net relets as in thelast year or an average over the last 3 years’. [Section 2.4 (page 26)]9.2 The Social Rented stockWe have studied information from the Council’s Housing Strategy Statistical Appendix (HSSA) forthree years (from 2003 to 2005 inclusive). The figure below shows the changing levels of stock forboth the Council and RSLs within the City.Figure 9.1 Council and RSL stock numbers (2003-2005)16,00014,000Council12,963 13,08212,624 12,925RSL12,407 12,67912,00010,0008,0006,0004,0002,00002003 2004 2005Source: City of Westminster Housing Needs Survey 2006The above table shows that there has been a decrease in the number of RSL properties and also adecrease in the number of Council rented properties. The reductions recorded in Council stocknumbers between 2003 and 2005 are largely due to Right-to-Buy sales. Overall, there has been a netdecrease of 959 properties from the City of Westminster social housing stock (480 per annum).PAGE 85