Social Housing Stock, Lettings and Vacancies, 2009-10

This Statistical Release presents information on stock held by local authorities and registered social landlords as at 31 March 2010, as well as information on the number of vacancies and lettings.

This latest release updates the statistics previously released on 18 November 2009.

The key points from the latest release are:

• There were 234,824 social landlord dwellings, bedsits and bedspaces in Wales at 31 March 2010, which represents an increase of 1 per cent since the end of March 2009.
• At 31 March 2010, 53 per cent of all social housing stock was owned by Registered Social Landlords (RSLs) compared with 51 per cent at the end of March 2009. This has been mainly due to further large scale voluntary transfers of stock from local authorities to RSLs(1).
• At the 31st March 2010, 1.7 per cent of social housing stock was vacant.  The proportion of vacant social housing stock has remained relatively stable over recent years, with stock owned by local authorities showing slightly higher vacancy levels than stock owned by Registered Social Landlords (RSLs).
• During 2009-10 there were 22,649 new lettings(2) of social housing stock. The majority (57 per cent) of these were via the waiting list, with a further 20 per cent via priority lettings to homeless households.

(1) Further details on the stock transfers can be found in the ‘Quality Information’ section at the end of the release.
(2) New lettings include lettings to new tenants, re-lets, transfers and exchanges.

Contact

Tel: 029 2082 5055
E-mail: stats.housing@wales.gsi.gov.uk

Next update

November 2011 (provisional - to be confirmed on the 'Due Out Soon' page)