Social housing vacancies, lettings and arrears, 2011-12

This statistical release presents information on the amount of housing units that were empty (vacancies) at 31 March 2012, the number of housing units rented to tenants (lettings) during 2011-12 and the number of social housing tenants who were in rent arrears at 31 March 2012 and previous years.

This latest release updates the statistics previously released on 16 November 2011.

The key points from the latest release are:

• both the number of vacant housing units and the percentage of vacant social housing stock increased during 2011-12. At the 31 March 2012, 3,943 social housing units (1.7 per cent) were vacant, up by 10 per cent on the previous year
• housing units vacant for more than 6 months followed a similar trend, increasing by  8 per cent compared to the end of March 2011. As a result over a quarter (28 per cent) of all vacant social housing had been empty for more than 6 months at 31 March 2012. However the percentage of all social housing which has been vacant for more than 6 months remained unchanged at around 0.5 per cent
• new lettings of social housing stock have continued to fall since 2009-10, with 21,386 new lettings during 2011-12. The majority (56 per cent) of these continued to be via housing waiting lists, with a further 20 per cent via priority lettings to homeless households
• since 2008-09 the number and percentage of social housing tenancies in rent arrears has gradually been falling with just under a third (31 per cent) of all social housing tenancies in rent arrears at 31 March 2012. However the percentage of tenancies in rent arrears for 13 weeks or more remained unchanged at 2 per cent

Further information

StatsWales website (external link)

Contact

Tel: 029 2082 5055
Email: stats.housing@wales.gsi.gov.uk

Next update

February 2014 (provisional - to be confirmed on 'Due out soon' page)