Housing Needs Assessment 2006 - Westminster City Council

Westminster – Housing Needs Assessment 20064.10 SummaryThe household survey collected a significant amount of data about households’ currentcircumstances. Some of the main findings were:• Almost 90% of households in the City of Westminster live in a flat and households living inrented housing are most likely to live in flats.• Just under a fifth of all households are ‘pensioner-only’ and 16.2% contain children. Nonpensionerhouseholds that do not contain children dominate the private rented sector.• Car ownership data suggests that there is an average of 0.55 cars per household in the City.There are large differences by tenure with owner-occupiers (with mortgage) having anaverage of 0.88 cars per household whilst Council tenants have an average of 0.24 cars perhousehold. Over two-thirds of all households in social rented accommodation have no use ofa car or van.• Around a quarter of workers work in the City of Westminster area. The average journey towork time of all heads of households in employment is 21 minutes.• Around 22% of households have lived in their current home for less than two years; with41.0% of moves occurring within the City.• Households moving from abroad are much more likely to be living in private rentedaccommodation, with 96.5% living in this form of accommodation. The survey also showsthat over half of households moving from abroad moved to be closer to employment or otheressential services.• In terms of future household moves, the survey estimates that 27,437 existing and 6,086potential households need or expect to move within the next two years. In both cases ahigher proportion would like to move to owner-occupation than expect to do so.PAGE 52