OREANDA-NEWS. Private registered providers of social housing own 2,708,611 homes, a 1.6% increase on the total for 2014, according to the HCA’s Statistical Data Return (SDR) which has been published today for the fourth consecutive year.

The data come from an annual survey of all private registered providers (PRPs) in England and includes data on size and type of home, location and rents at 31 March 2015. Additional data for large providers with 1,000 homes or more include Right to Buy sales and acquisitions during the year.

Key trends include:

  • private registered providers of social housing (PRPs) reported 2,708,611 units/bedspaces owned at 31 March 2015, an increase of 1.6% on the total for 2014

  • the rate of growth in the social housing sector had been slowing since 2011 but has now reversed this trend in the year to March 2015. This is largely due to the increased level of grant funded supply in the final year of the now completed 2011-15 Affordable Homes Programme, and to two large scale voluntary transfers of stock from local authorities

  • Affordable Rent stock has increased by 54% (from 79,815 units/bedspaces in 2014 to 123,264 in 2015), this growth being attributable to this being the main type of new social housing supply

  • the average net rent for general needs stock owned by PRPs with more than 1,000 units/bedspaces was £95.88 per week. This represented an increase of 3.9% since 2014, reflecting a combination of new homes added to providers’ stock, inflation-linked increases in target rents and convergence towards target rents permissible as part of the rent standard in force when the rent levels recorded in the SDR were set

Jonathan Walters, HCA’s Deputy Director of Strategy and Performance, said:

The SDR provides an authoritative view of the position of the sector that helps inform our regulatory engagement and is widely used by stakeholders to better understand the housing association market. The information in the SDR is a rich data source which provides detail at a local authority level about the types or properties owned and managed by providers.

This year’s figures show a sector that continues to grow and has delivered the Affordable Rent Programme in conjunction with the HCA and GLA. As a regulator we will use this information to help us better understand providers and their compliance with our standards and in particular how they meet expectations around rents.

Data was collected from PRPs in April and May 2015.