Housing Needs Assessment 2006 - Westminster City Council

Westminster – Housing Needs Assessment 2006(i) IntroductionThis Guide, published in July 2000, has gone a long way to filling the gap which has been apparentever since, in Circular 7/91, the Government told councils they could seek affordable housingprovided that there was evidence of housing need (without defining ‘need’). There are still anumber of detailed difficulties with the advice, but they are minor compared with the gaps that havebeen filled. The following summary focuses upon the key issues, and in particular those that affectaffordable housing.It should be noted that the ODPM published, in December 2005, a Housing Markets AssessmentsDraft practice guidance which provided advice on how housing need should be assessed. Thequestionnaires for this survey were agreed before this guidance was published and so follow thecurrent Guide. However, this report has taken account of some of the main changes proposed in thenew guidance and several elements of the methodology. All future references in this report to the‘ODPM Guide’ refer to the current guidance, since the subsequent version published in March 2005and the advice contained within the Housing Market Assessment Draft practice guidance December2005 were both very much drafts.(ii) Definition of housing needThe definition of housing need controls which households are defined as being in need, andindirectly affects what constitutes affordable housing. Affordable housing is, in principle, designedto address the identified housing need. The current Guide defines a household in housing need asone which is living in housing that is not suitable for its requirements and who cannot afford toresolve this unsuitability within the private sector housing market.ODPMGuide‘Housing need refers to households lacking their own housing or living in housingwhich is inadequate or unsuitable, who are unlikely to be able to meet their needsin the housing market without some assistance’. [Appendix 2 (page 116)](iii) ProcedureAn 18-stage procedure is set out in the Guide. This is aimed at producing an estimate of the netneed for new affordable housing. Thus the Guide is very much geared to the requirements ofplanning for clear indications of the affordable housing requirement. The following tablereproduces the stages from the key table of the Guide.PAGE 24