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• Right to Buy funded starts on site and acquisitions, England, by Local Authority area

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The figures include all starts on site and acquisitions of dwellings for the provision of social housing made by or on behalf of the authority, excluding those funded partially or wholly by grant from the HCA or the GLA.

These figures form a proxy for the number of additional homes delivered using RTB receipts. In some cases they may include some starts on site or acquisitions that are funded by other sources.

Provision was made for some local authorities to include HCA or GLA spending for starts on site or acquisitions, where business decisions had already been made in 2012-13, before the Department clarified that these should be excluded. These starts on site and acquisitions are currently not included in the statistics provided here so that the statistics are based on a consistent definition over time.

The starts on site and acquisitions data are particularly sensitive to reporting error as they are not audited in the way that sales and receipts figures are and there are no comparable statistics collected against which they can be assessed. Consultation has revealed that the question the Department asks in its LOGASnet Return about starts on site and acquisitions has been interpreted in different ways by different local authorities. For example, in the past some local authorities may have reported all starts on site and acquisitions rather than excluding those that were partially or fully funded by the HCA or GLA.

It is possible that interpretation of starts on site and acquisitions by local authorities may still not be uniform. Whilst most local authorities should now be (correctly) reporting all starts on site or acquisitions not funded by the HCA or GLA, there may be some others interpreting the question more narrowly as only referring to delivery directly funded by RTB receipts. We will continue to work with local authorities to improve the quality of the data and the way it is collected.

For detailed definitions, see definitions in Right to Buy Statistics.

Data are collected from a quarterly local authority return to the DCLG called LOGASNet. Local authorities with dwelling stock which receive poolable housing receipts supply these data to DCLG on a quarterly basis.

These data are taken directly from the Social Housing Sales data set, Live Table 693.

Please note that figures published in the live tables are organised into financial quarters, i.e. 2013/2014 financial Q1 corresponds to April-June 2013, whereas figures are published here in calendar quarter intervals, where 2013 calendar Q1 corresponds to the interval Jan – March 2013.

If data is not provided for a local authority this is either due to the authority not owning dwelling stock, or the reporting boundaries changing and thereby causing groups of authorities in the affected areas to be reclassified and consequently not reporting data for specific time periods.