A couple of months ago Shelter launched their new service, Housing Insights for Communities. They have now followed this up with a Housing Databank.
“Housing Insights” is a tool to help developers work out who is most likely to be opposed to a housing development in a particular area. This helps the developer to focus its consultation and lobbying. It’s probably no surprise that what are termed wealthy executives, affluent greys and flourishing families are more likely to be opposed to house-building and planning applications, whilst burdened singles and struggling families are in favour. The two groupings roughly balance on a national scale. Shelter’s tool then enables a district by district picture to be produced.
The Databank allows access on a district by district basis to a broad range of Government data, brought together in one place. I tried it out today. You can look up not only total housing completions each year but also information such as numbers of possession orders obtained by mortgage lenders and empty dwellings. Shelter tell me they have brought together data which is actually very hard to find although it is publicly available across a range of Government web sites. The information sources are specified (though you have to know where to click- it’s the question mark beside each data type).
These look like being a very helpful pair of tools in the making and consideration of planning applications for new housing. Here are links to the pages on Shelter’s website:
Housing Insights for Communities
Postscript: For those who are interested, the houses in the picture are council houses at Armour Close in Islington. See this link to Homes for Islington for more information.
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