National Register of Social Housing (NROSH)

Christine Whitehead, Daniel Banks and Fiona Lyall Grant.

Background

• The National Register of Social Housing (NROSH) will be a property database containing a record of each individual unit of social housing in England. It will provide neighbourhood level information for the whole country which will be accessible by central, regional and local government and other interested parties, and reduce the burden of reporting on housing providers. ODPM September 2004

• NROSH will replace the stock elements of the Regulatory and Statistical Return (RSR) for housing associations and the Housing Strategy Statistical Appendix (HSSA) for local authorities. Currently it is a regulatory requirement for HAs and LAs to supply this information on a annual basis.

The process

• In order for NROSH to provide detailed social housing property information at a local level a unique property reference number (UPRN) must be allocated for each individual social housing property in England. To date no UPRNs have been allocated.

• However, data are being collected from both HAs and LAs. DCLG along with the HC have established data standards by which the data will be collected. Schema have been developed by toolkit providers, which uploads existing property data from management information systems. These data are then sent to DCLG for validation. Once validated the data are sent to consultants for the HC who aggregate the data to RSR level. Dataspring receive both the migrated data and raw NROSH data to analyse and compare with the individual HAs RSR. The analyses are then sent on to the HAs and where necessary follow up calls are made to clarify inconsistencies between datasets.

What is asked for?

Ten critical fields from the data standards, out of 107, must be complete in order to compare NROSH data with RSR data:

1. Confirmation of ownership

2. Confirmation of manager

3. Provision category (general needs, supported etc)

4. Exclusivity (self-contained or not self-contained)

5. Tenure type

6. Vacancy status

7. Rent payments per year

8. Rent payment

9. Eligibility for housing benefit

10. Amount of service charge

Dataspring involvement

• Dataspring have been involved with the development of NROSH since its inception with the overall aim of ensuring that it will constitute an acceptable replacement for stock based RSR data

• This process has been in collaboration with staff at the Housing Corporation

• The data standards (Field definitions document) has been reviewed and revised in order to capture data requested in the RSR

• Validation and aggregation documentation have been produced to ensure data are correct and can be aggregated to RSR level

• Tolerance levels have been set with which to measure the acceptability of NROSH data in comparison with the RSR for regulatory purposes

Methodology

Creation of housing association level templates comparing their RSR data to the NROSH data downloads at two levels:

• Comparison to Raw NROSH data (different format to RSR data)

• Comparison to Migrated NROSH data (matching the RSR format)

What does this look like?

We create Excel template files to send to each participating HA, these contain at least 4 worksheets:

1. Summary Sheet

2. Migrated Comparison at national level

3. Migrated Comparison at LA level (e.g. Part I of the RSR)

4. Raw Comparison (covering 10 critical fields)

5. Also, some worksheets from previous downloads if available

HA name: ANCHOR TRUST KeyHA code: LH4095Date of download: 17/07/2007

NROSH Field Sub category Corresponding RSR RSR fields Total in NROSH Total RSR Absolute difference % difference

MasOrgCode n/a Total Dwellings

Part A lines 3,12,13,17 column E and I; and Part B line 23667 30588 -6921 -22.63

Field 7.1: Owner Confirmation

Owner Confirmation 1,2 Total OwnedPart A lines 3,12,13,17 column E 23644 30096 -6452 -21.44

Owner ConfirmationThe data provider holds a lease of less than 21 ye Total Managed

Part A lines 3,12,13,17 column I 492 -492 missing value

Owner Confirmation None of the above n/a n/a 23 23 no RSR stockField 23: Provision Category

Provision Category GN Total general needsPart A line 1 Column E + line 1 column I 92 91 1 1.10

Provision CategoryOP_ALL_SPECIAL_FEATURES

Housing for Older People: All special

Part A line 4 column E + column I 3624 -3624 missing value

Provision CategoryOP_SOME_SPECIAL_FEATURES

Housing for Older People: Some special

Part A line 5 column E + column I 358 502 -144 -28.69

Provision Category SUPH_OLDER_PEOPLEHousing for Older People: Designated

Part A line 6 column E + column I 23211 23901 -690 -2.89

Provision Category

Housing for older people (SUPH_OLDER_PEOPLE, CARE_HOME, + 2 OP variables)

F6: Housing for older people

Part F line 9 column 1 + column 3 23569 28027 -4458 -15.91

Fields 87, 97.1, 97.2, 101, 102, 103: Tenure, Rent Payment Due, Rent Per Payment and Service ChargesTenure Assured Total assured Part H line 10 column 91 -91 missing valueTenure Secure Total secure Part H line 20 column 0 0 missing value

RentPaymentDue Avg wkly rent Part H rent dataPart H line 21 column 2, line 39 column 2 £52.58 £50.59 1.99 3.93

ServiceChgAmount Avg wkly sc Part H sc dataPart H Lines 10, 20 and 39 Columns 4 £63.23 £14.99 48.24 321.81

ServcChgEligForHB YES HB eligiblePart H Lines 10, 20 and 39 Column 3 22326 24434 -2108 -8.63

ServcChgEligForHB NO Non HB eligiblePart H Lines 10, 20 and 39 Column 5 1320 24313 -22993 -94.57

% difference from RSR less than 10%% difference from RSR greater than 30%

Raw Template

NROSHvariabledefinition

RSRvariabledefinition

NROSHandRSRdata

Differences

Technical Aspects

There are two broad options when dealing with repetitive complicated cross dataset reporting:

1. Manual completion, aided by some assisting elements

2. Automation wherever practicable

The approach depends on the nature of the project – for example, the complexity, the amount of repetition involved and the likelihood of

alterations

Raw Template Automation Diagram

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Excel Raw Templates

NROSHDev.

Database(Access)

RSRDev.

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NROSHVariable

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RSRVariable

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Cross datasetvariable matching

SQL Queries

Cross Application Dynamic link

Raw Database(Access)

Master Database (selects Housing Assoc.)

Auto-format using VBAand condit. formattingand calculation fields

auto-populated

Automatedtesting

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Benefits of this approach

• Efficiency - templates take a fraction of the time to produce

• Accuracy - content produced by tested programming that centralises the complexities

• Flexibility - database and programming structures can be converted to produce new outputs

Current activity

Seventy-eight Housing Associations have submitted data since the first upload was taken in September 2005, accounting for 5% of total HAs. The total stock recorded in NROSH for these HAs is 88% of that recorded in the RSR 2007.

Size of HAs taking part in NROSH 0-250 units 251-1000 units 1001-10,000 units 10,001+ units

11 HAs (15%) 6 HAs (8%) 47 HAs (63%) 11 HAs (15%) Frequency of NROSH data downloads To date 184 downloads of NROSH data have been received since April 2006 from 78 HAs and analysed: One download Two

downloads Three downloads

Four downloads

Five downloads

Six + downloads

47HAs (62%) 9HAs (12%) 4HAs (5%) 6HAs (8%) 3HAs (4%) 8HAs (10%)

Generally the more downloads of NROSH data a housing association makes the more accurate overall the dataset has become. 62% have only made one download.

NROSH data compared with the RSR

• The number of HAs participating in NROSH and the amount of stock reported are increasing steadily.

• HAs are generally improving accuracy with each download – the majority make changes in response to feedback.

• Looking at individual housing association data five HAs had 100% of their RSR stock reported in NROSH.

• 58 HAs had NROSH total stock within 25% of their RSR reported stock.

• There is substantial variation between fields with the highest completion rate for

Mandatory Fields and the lowest for Vacancies.

Number of HAs and total stock in NROSH

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Summary

• Seventy eight HAs have submitted data via NROSH since October 2005. This amounts to over 180 downloads by September 2007;

• Overall follow up calls to NROSH data providers (those who have not submitted recently and those who have) see NROSH as a positive way of collecting social housing data, particularly if it is seen as successful and it removes the annual burden of completing the RSR;

• The quality of NROSH data is steadily improving as HAs receive more feedback in the form of comparison templates. However, a large proportion of participating HAs have only made one download;

• The data quality should improve further once the new data standards are in place.

Conclusion

• Providing the toolkits are user friendly and the schema collects all required data there is no reason why NROSH should not prove a successful replacement of stock based data collection from the RSR

• However, in order for NROSH to work effectively UPRNs must be allocated to each individual property

• Changing the schema on the toolkit must be kept to an absolute minimum. At present it takes roughly 6 months for the toolkit providers to implement changes or additions to the data standards. NROSH will not be as flexible as the RSR for this reason.

• The RSR and NROSH should run parallel for a year in order to make sure what the regulator is asking for the regulator is getting. This will place an extra burden on housing associations during this time.