Jargon Buster

Explanations of terms used on this website

This Jargon Buster gives an explanation of the terms used on this website. Some of these definitions have come from the Tenant Participation Advisory Service (TPAS) website (www.tpas.org.uk).

Jargon Buster table

Term	Explanation
Assured Tenancy	Since January 1989 all new tenants of housing associations have assured tenancies. They have fewer rights in law than secure tenants, although Housing Corporation guidance requires some of these rights be written into assured tenancy agreements.
Benchmarking	Assessing an organisation’s performance by comparing it to that of other organisations of a similar size and purpose.
BME	Black & Minority Ethnic. Sometimes written as BEM (Black and Ethnic Minority).
Choice based lettings	Choice-based lettings are based on the Dutch style of advertising and letting homes and aims to give a more customer focused approach to the letting of social housing.
DCLG	Department for the Communities and Local Government
DEFRA	Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs - the UK Government department dealing with policies affecting food, air, land and water.
EERA	East of England Regional Assembly - The East of England Regional Assembly exists to promote the economic, social and environmental well-being in the East of England.
HA	Housing Association – an organisation providing social housing.
Housing Corporation	Regulating body for housing associations in England. Implements regional and national housing strategies and invests in the supply and quality of affordable homes.
Intermediate housing	Sub-market housing including Low Cost Home Ownership Schemes, designed to meet the needs of households who cannot access full cost market housing but who can afford to pay more than housing association rents.
JRF	Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
Keyworker	A term used by Government to define people who do jobs that are essential to the community, such as Firefighters, Nurses, Teachers etc. Keyworkers often struggle to find housing in areas where house prices are very high, leading to shortages of essential workers in places such as London.
LA	Local Authority – an administrative unit of local government.
LCHO	Low Cost Home Ownership - subsidised housing in the private, owner-occupied sector which is available to people who cannot afford to occupy houses generally available on the open market.
LSVT	Large Scale Voluntary Transfer of stock from the local authority sector to the HA sector (with tenant approval).
NROSH	The National Register of Social Housing (NROSH) is a system for collecting social housing data on individual properties directly from local authorities (LAs) and housing associations (HAs). The data standards, latest field definitions and XML schema can be found by visiting the CLG website.
ODPM	Office of the Deputy Prime Minister - former government department responsible for town and country planning policy and administration (now DCLG).
PFI	Private Finance Initiative - designed to encourage private-sector involvement and finance in capital projects.
RSL	Registered Social Landlord - usually used to describe housing associations that are registered with a regulatory body.
RSR	Regulatory and Statistical Return - an annual survey of Housing Association stockholdings and rents, administered by the Housing Corporation.
S106	Section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 allows a Local Planning Authority (LPA) to enter into a legally binding agreement or planning obligation, with a land developer over a related issue. The obligation is sometimes termed as a 'Section 106 Agreement'. S106 Agreements can act as a main instrument for placing restrictions on the developers, often requiring them to minimise the impact on the local community and to carry out tasks, which will provide community benefits.
Secure Tenancy	The vast majority of local authority tenants, and housing association tenants whose tenancies began before 15 January 1989, are secure tenants and have a range of additional rights covered in the Housing Act 1985.
SEERA	South East England Regional Assembly - The Assembly has responsibilities in the three key areas of advocacy, accountability and regional planning in the South East.
Shared Ownership	A programme whereby people who cannot get full mortgages share the cost of purchasing a property with an RSL. The applicant (lessee) and the social landlord each pay a part of the purchase price, the lessee making mortgage payments to a bank or building society on the share purchased and paying an affordable rent to the RSL on the RSL’s remaining share. The term ‘shared ownership’ applies to any scheme where a proportion of ownership may be purchased. Conventionally, lessees have the option to ‘staircase’ their stake of ownership in a property by purchasing further shares from the social landlord.