FOI request (FOIR-137756700)

Historical changes in council housing stock

Requested Fri 16 August 2019
Responded  Tue 27 August 2019

I am writing to you from ****, the countryside charity. We campaign to enhance, promote and protect the English countryside, including the communities within it. Through our campaigning, we have identified the provisions of genuinely affordable housing as a key driver to enable individuals and communities in rural towns and villages to thrive.

With this in mind, we are currently carrying out a research project on the impact of the Right to Buy on local authority housing stock, focusing particularly, though not exclusively, on rural housing stock. We hope to use this research as part of our ongoing campaigning for better resourcing and more autonomy for local authority housing and planning departments.

I am therefore writing to you under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to request the following information from your housing department.

We are interested in finding out about historical changes in council housing stock. In the following questions 'homes' refers to housing (houses, bungalows, flats, etc.) owned by the council and rented as 'council housing'. This is with the exception of question 4, where the definition of 'homes' is widened to include those owned by other providers (e.g. Housing Associations).

1. How many homes did your authority own in the financial year 1979-80?

1a. If your authority has been formed more recently than 1979-80 through a merger of smaller authorities, how many homes did your constituent authorities own in 1979? If boundary changes were more complicated than that, please provide us with the best information you have.

1b. If applicable, how many homes did your authority or constituent authorities own in 1979 in areas designated as rural under Section 157 of the Housing Act 1985?

2. Did your authority or any constituent authorities undergo a large scale voluntary transfer?

2a. If so, in what year did the transfer occur, to which registered provider(s), and how many homes were transferred?

3. If applicable, how many homes has your authority (or constituent authorities) sold under Right to Buy in designated rural areas since 1979-80?

3a. If your authority carried out a large scale voluntary transfer, how many homes had been sold under Right to Buy in designated rural areas at the date of the transfer?

4. If applicable, how many homes for social rent have been completed (by all providers) each year for the past five years in designated rural areas within your local authority area?

If it is not possible to provide the information requested due to the information exceeding the cost of compliance limits identified in Section 12, I would be grateful if you could provide advice on how I could refine my request.

Response

Hastings is an urban area.

Q1 Information not held

Q2a - Hastings Borough Council transferred its stock to 1066 Housing Association (now Optivo) in 1996 as part of a Large Scale Voluntary Transfer (LSVT). We hold no recorded information on the number of homes transferred.

Q3 and Q4 - N/A - Hastings is an urban area.