Housing Needs Assessment 2006 - Westminster City Council

9. Supply of affordable housing(iii) Estimate of lettingsThe figures for RSL lettings show some variation over time. This makes it difficult to estimatefuture supply with any certainty. For the purposes of estimating future supply we have thereforeused the average number of lettings over the three year period studied (the use of data for a threeyear period is consistent with Government guidance).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)]Therefore our estimated future supply of lettings from the social rented sector overall will be 939(563+475-99).9.4 New dwellingsFrom the estimated supply of affordable housing we also need to deduct lettings made to newdwellings. As one of the main purposes of the survey is to estimate any surplus or shortfall ofaffordable housing, it is important to avoid double-counting by not including likely future supplythrough additions to the stock from RSLs and the Local Authority (although these new propertieswill themselves in time produce some relets). This is also a view taken in ODPM guidance.ODPMGuide‘…it may be more helpful to combine committed and shortfall figures [shortfallincluding committed new provision] to obtain an overall affordable need estimate,which can then be related to overall planned housing requirements and provision’.[Section 2.4 (page 26)]Table 9.3 Analysis of past provision of new affordable rented housing– Average for three yearsNew affordable housing 2002/03 2003/04 2004/05 AverageAdditional LA dwellings (HSSA) 0 0 0 0Additional RSL dwellings (HSSA) 243 206 165 205Additional RSL dwellings (CORE) 141 135 103 126Source: City of Westminster Housing Needs Survey 2006The table above summarises information contained in the HSSA return for 2003-2005 (Section N)and CORE data for the same period. The data indicates that there has been an annual average of 166new affordable housing completions between 2002-03 and 2004-05. These are taken away from ourestimate of lettings to provide a relet figure of 773 dwellings per annum (939-166). The figure of773 represents a turnover of around 3.1% (based on the number of relets and the estimated numberof social rented dwellings (i.e. 773/25,086).PAGE 87