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Affordable Housing Securing Consent Survey, 2005 - 2007
29/04/2008
New official statistics on the quantity and location of affordable housing securing planning consent have been released today by Scotland's Chief Statistician.
These new statistics have been developed with planning authorities to provide information on the operation of planning guidance on the provision of affordable housing. The statistics record information on all affordable housing securing planning consent - be it by public subsidy or developer contributions - during the 2005-07 financial years.
The main findings are
- An estimated 12,173 affordable housing units were granted planning consent during the 2005/07 financial years. Seventy eight per cent (9,526 units) are to be entirely publicly funded (including funds raised commercially by Registered Social Landlords) and the remaining twenty two percent (2,647 units) are to involve some form of contribution by a private developer
- A clear majority (seventy one per cent or 8,672 units) of affordable housing granted planning consent are to be for rent by a Registered Social Landlord. The remaining twenty nine per cent (3,501 units) is split across of variety of other tenures
- The highest number of affordable housing units granted consent during the survey reporting period were in Glasgow City (1,952 units or sixteen per cent of the national total). This is followed by Highland (1,331 units or eleven per cent) and Edinburgh (1,172 units or ten per cent). All consented units in Glasgow are to be entirely publicly funded. Highland and Edinburgh contain an almost even split between entirely publicly funded units and those that contain some form of developer contribution
- For those planning applications granted consent that contain a mixture of market-price and developer-contributed affordable housing (and hence excluding applications where there are no developer-contributed units), the average breakdown is estimated to be 85 per cent market housing and 15 per cent on-site affordable housing
- A minority of planning authorities have accepted commuted payments from developers for affordable housing provision. This is in lieu of developer- contributed affordable units. Seventy five per cent of applications where only a commuted payment was accepted (154 out of 205) were for market-price developments of no more than 5 units in size
The Affordable Housing Securing Planning Consent survey is a new official statistics collection. It is important to stress that this survey is of planning consents for new affordable housing provision. The statistics don't report on the actual building or completion of new affordable units.
Profile Pages detailing councils' affordable housing policies, along with illustrative information on ratios of house price-to earnings and new build rates etc are available through the Planning Statistics web pages. Those examining the results of this survey may find it useful to refer to these Profile Pages for further context-setting information.
Official statistics are produced by professionally independent statistical staff.