An analysis of strategic housing market assessment as an evidence for the UK local housing planning

Local planning authorities in the UK are facing serious challenges regarding housing supply. Under such background, Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA) was introduced to provide the main evidence for local housing planning and policy, by objectively accessing local housing need, especially affordable housing need. Local planning authorities are supposed to conduct SHMAs regularly to ensure that housing policy is based on objectively assessed needs. However, previous studies have shown that key questions remain about SHMAs’ effectiveness. Meanwhile, the last two decade has seen great progress in Evidence-based Policymaking (EBPM). Since SHMAs provide the main evidence for local housing policy, it is necessary to evaluate how robust the current SHMAs are. This research explores the methodological robustness of SHMAs, namely the transparency and adequacy of the method and data used to assess housing need, by reviewing the most up-to-date SHMAs and making comparisons with previous versions. As results, we have three findings. First, opacities remain surrounding the research methods and data sources. Second, regarding the specific way of assessing housing need, most SHMAs assess current housing need based on housing register data and future housing need based on household projection data. Third, the methodological weaknesses pointed out by previous studies are no longer common in the current SHMAs. However, there are still concerns regarding forecasting future housing need based on household projection, since housing is a market-based system driven by interactions of many economic and social factors.

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Notes

Knowledge broker organization is an intermediary organization that develop the relationships between the producers and users of knowledge, such as research, and facilitate users’ access to different types of knowledge. As representative examples, What Works Centers are working on ensuring that the best available evidence on ‘what works’ is available to policymakers.

Headship rates measure the proportion of individuals in the population, in a particular age/sex/marital status group, who head a household. Projected headship rates are applied to projected populations to produce projected numbers of households (DCLG [10], p.37).

The six local authorities are Brighton and Hove, Castle Morpeth, Macclesfield, Yorkshire and Humberside, Peak Sub-Region, North West Region.

A concealed household is a household that currently lives within another household but has a preference to live independently and is unable to afford appropriate market housing (DCLG [10], Annexes p.37).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan Zhaoyuan Liu
  2. Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan Soichiro Takagi
  1. Zhaoyuan Liu