Housing Needs Assessment 2006 - Westminster City Council

Westminster – Housing Needs Assessment 20069.5 Shared ownership supplyIn most local authorities the amount of shared ownership available in the stock is fairly limited (asis the case in the City of Westminster). However, it is still important to consider to what extent thecurrent supply may be able to help those in need of affordable housing.Therefore we include an estimate of the number of shared ownership units that become availableeach year. Information from the Housing Corporation suggests that there are around 494 sharedownership units in the City; the Census estimated the figure to be 659, Council informationsuggests 715, whilst the housing needs assessment data estimates 172. The average of these fourfigures is 510. For the purposes of this analysis it is assumed that the turnover of shared ownershipaccommodation is roughly the same as found in the social rented sector. This is estimated at 3.1%.Hence we estimate that each year an average of 16 units of shared ownership tenure will becomeavailable to meet housing needs (3.1% × 510). Therefore, the estimate of supply becomes 789 perannum (773+16).9.6 Vacant dwellingsAs of April 2005, there were 412 vacant dwellings in the social rented stock, representing around1.6% of all social rented stock in the City. This is considered to be an average vacancy rate andhence no adjustment needs to be made to the figures to take account of this.ODPMGuide‘The change in vacancies is a key factor in the net stock approach. The generalprinciple is that there should be a target vacancy rate to allow normal movement inthe housing stock. Typical recommended allowances would be 4 per cent for theprivate sector with 2 per cent being more appropriate for the social sector’. [Section2.5 (page 28)]9.7 Changes in the supply of affordable housingThis covers stages 15 and 16 of the ‘Basic Needs Assessment Model’. Stage 15 is ‘minus increasedvacancies & units taken out of management’; Stage 16 is ‘plus committed units of new affordablesupply’.In the case of Stage 15, it would not be sensible to remove from the supply equation the number ofproperties taken out of management. It is much more sensible to estimate the likely reduction inrelets as a result of such losses.PAGE 88