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Almost 40% fewer social homes let during first six months of pandemic
The number of new social housing lettings in England fell by 39% between April and September last year compared with the same period in 2019, the latest government data shows.
A total of 76,458 social homes were let during the first six months of 2020/21, compared with 125,149 in the first six months of 2019/20.
The data covers the majority of the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK, starting just eight days after the first national lockdown was announced on 23 March 2020.
This likely explains the large drop in social housing lettings as moving house was banned between 23 March and 13 May last year, unless considered to be “reasonably necessary”.
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Social housing lettings took the biggest hit in April and May, when just 5,000 and 7,000 new lettings were recorded respectively.
This number rose to 15,337 new lets in September – still 24% fewer than the number of social housing lettings in September 2019.
New lets by local authorities saw a larger decrease than among housing associations during the six-month period, with lets falling by 43% and 38% compared with the previous year respectively.
Overall, homes remained unoccupied between lets for longer during the first six months of 2020/21, with an average of 29 vacant days compared with 17 days in the previous year.
Meanwhile, the proportion of new social lettings being provided to people in temporary accommodation increased by five percentage points to make up 16% of all social lettings.
However, the total number of social housing lettings being given to households living in temporary accommodation fell by 2,000 compared to 2019/20.
There were also 900 fewer households entering social housing after a period of rough sleeping.
