Housing needs survey

You are here: Home | Life | Housing - general | Housing needs survey

Housing needs survey

In January 2005, questionnaires were sent out to 14,000 households in a major survey of housing needs in the city

The survey was carried out to give us more detail about people's housing needs and aspirations and help shape the development of new homes - in particular low-cost affordable housing - in years to come. The responses have helped influence housing and planning policies and will help to ensure investment in affordable housing matches local needs as closely as possible.

Background information

All local authorities are required by statute to carry out regular assessments of housing need within the authority, and this work will allow us to project future housing need in the city so that we can make appropriate investment decisions. In Brighton & Hove, where land values and the property market are both buoyant, it is of great importance that affordable housing is provided that matches local need as closely as possible.

The council chose to assess housing need in partnership with five other authorities in the sub-region - Eastbourne, Wealden, Lewes, Hastings and Rother. In addition to information about Brighton & Hove, this gives us access to a sub-regional report on housing needs within the partner authorities. We now have more in-depth information on issues such as migration across the sub-region, which allow us to design cross-authority work to meet the regional housing need.

The main body of the survey fieldwork was carried out by postal questionnaire sent to a random sample across the city. We also interviewed a number of groups in more depth - BME people, older people, younger people, people with learning disabilities, LGBT people, and travellers and gypsies - to allow us to pick up on issues of particular import to our communities of interest, and follow best practice guidelines on monitoring need levels among these communities.

The survey was carried out between 11 January and 1 February 2005.

Please follow the links below for the survey reports:

• Brighton & Hove full final report of the Housing Needs Survey 2005 [PDF 889kb]
• Brighton & Hove summary report of the Housing Needs Survey 2005 [PDF 889kb]
• East Sussex Sub-Regional summary report of the Housing Needs Survey 2005 [PDF 251kb]
• Demand for property size HNS [PDF 58kb]
• East Sussex Specialist Housing Needs Survey report [PDF 531kb]

For further information, call the council's Housing Strategy Team on (01273) 293288.