Housing Statistics for Scotland Quarterly Update (published 1 Dec 2015)

Affordable Housing Supply up to end September 2015

Affordable Housing Supply Programme (AHSP) statistics reflect the broader supply of affordable homes (i.e. for social rent, affordable rent and affordable home ownership) and include off the shelf purchases and rehabilitations as well as new build. The social rent new build element of this covers largely the same houses referred to in the social sector new build section of this report. Statistics for the AHSP are available up to the end of September 2015. As a result they have been presented here for the year to end September. This differs from the figures in much of the remainder of this report which cover years to end June.

Changes in the funding programme in 2011 and 2012 impacted on the timing of affordable housing activity as well as the level of activity and this should be borne in mind when making comparisons over time.

Approvals, starts and completions are all measured for the AHSP. Approval is the point at which funding is granted and, along with completion, is a significant part of the administration process meaning that the data should be of good quality. Starts meanwhile can be recorded at any point in the development, for example when site clearance begins or any point up to the beginning of ground works for foundations. As a result approvals are generally deemed a better measure than starts for AHSP data.

Chart 10: Annual Affordable Housing Supply Programme (AHSP) approvals and completions, years to end Sept, 2006 to 2015

Chart 11: Quarterly Affordable Housing Supply Programme approvals and completions, 2005-2015

A total of 1,731 affordable homes were completed in the quarter between July and September 2015. This is 234 (16%) higher than in the same quarter in the previous year. It brings the total for the year to end June 2015 to 6,912 completions, up 7% on the previous year.

Between July and September 2015 a total of 1,201 affordable homes were approved. This is 99 (9%) more than in the same quarter in the previous year. It brings the total for the year to end September 2015 to 6,465 approvals, down 11% on the previous year.

Chart 12a below shows that in 2015 (year to end September), the total affordable housing supply programme completions have increased since 2014, and this increase has been driven by an increase in affordable rent and social rent. Social rent completions dropped between 2011 and 2014, but increased by 9% (352 homes) in 2015. Affordable rent completions have shown continuing growth since 2011, and over the past year they have increased by 13% (122 homes). Affordable home ownership completion numbers have shown little change between 2014 and 2015.

Chart 12a: AHSP Completions, years to end Sept, 2006 to 2015

Chart 12b: AHSP Completions, financial years 2005-06 to 2014-15

Affordable Housing Supply Completions up to end October 2015

As a one-off to help inform progress in meeting a target in a timely way, this section provides an update on affordable housing supply completions for the month of October in relation to the Scottish Government's target to deliver 30,000 affordable homes, 20,000 social rented homes, and 5,000 council homes between 2011-12 and 2015-16.

Including preliminary figures for the month of October 2015, there were a total of 30,133 affordable housing completions between April 2011 and end-October 2015, a figure which exceeds the target by 133 homes. Social rented completions during this time period totalled 20,400 exceeding the target by 400 homes, and council house completions totalled 5,292 exceeding the target by 292 homes.

The preliminary completions figures for the month of October are based on summary totals extracted from the Scottish Government affordable housing supply database on 11 November. The figures for October 2015 will therefore include all completions logged in the database by this point in time, but may exclude any completions for October 2015 where information is received and logged at a later point in time. The October 2015 figures should therefore be considered to be preliminary estimates and may be revised upwards when we publish the next quarterly update for October to December 2015.