News Flash! - Helping Providers Assess the Impact of NAHP Affordable Rents

The new national affordable housing programme (NAHP) poses many challenges for housing associations and local authorities. Landlords have to assess how many current and future residents might be able to pay an affordable rent which is higher than the current social housing rent (with and without housing benefit). To assist this process CCHPR has developed a model through which associations and authorities can assess the number of working households/not working who might be able to pay an affordable rent (set at 80/70/60% of market rent) by property type and size, local authority area and wider market area.

We are now able to offer this NAHP affordable housing calculator service at a very modest cost to associations and authorities. It offers a quick and authoritative assessment and we supply output in the form of a number of easily read tables. We can offer rapid turnaround to help meet programme bid timetables or subsequent strategic discussions. Please contact us for details of what we can do and the cost of this service.

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About Dataspring

Dataspring is a research unit within the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research, specialising in UK social housing data. It has particular expertise in the stock and rents data provided by housing associations in their Regulatory Statistical Returns (RSR) to the Tenant Services Authority, one of the Centre's key funders. Example uses of the data together with sample Dataspring reports can be found here. As a free service to the social housing community elements of two of our key databases can be interrogated online:

RENTS: Housing association Rents Guides including cross tenure comparisons

STOCK: Housing association stock from 1989 - RSR time-series data by type, size area etc.

Downloadable Housing and Planning Reports

In addition to Dataspring social housing reports the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research has published numerous reports on the interface between housing and land use planning, and issues around the principles of government intervention and the future of housing demand, finance and provision.

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Latest Outputs

Comparison of stock, rents and service charges among different types of social landlords: 2008/09  

In 2009, Dataspring undertook comparative analyses between these four types of social landlords on stock, rents and service charges. Following that baseline study, this paper updates the analysis and further investigates whether or not substantial differences exist between these landlords. Additional time series analysis has been included to help clarify this. 

Cross tenure rents and affordability 2008/09 update 

This paper looks at the regional pattern of rents over the period 2002/03 to 2008/09 in the local authority, housing association, private rented and owner occupier sectors. It also provides an update on the local pattern of these rents for the latest year. It then examines the regional distribution of affordability measured by rent/income and rent/earnings ratios across the four rent tenures for the same time frame. 

Target rents in relation to market levels: 2008/09 

This paper evaluates target rents in terms of the restructuring regime objectives by examining to what extent the target rents are employing market logic in their formation to reflect the policy objectives, with a main emphasis on a comparative approach. On the assumption that market rents are currently close to equilibrium, this paper compares target rents to private rents in an attempt to capture the extent to which fairness and affordability are delivered by the target rents. 

Guide to local rents 2009 Part I: Cross Tenure Rents 

The Guide to Local Rents, Part I, II and III provide comprehensive data on the pattern in the social housing sector in England. Part I reports rents charged by housing associations (HAs), rents charged by local authorities and rents in the private rented sector.