Housing, homelessness, rough sleeping and planning Work Programme 2025-26

Initiative

New record level data collection on the new Welsh Housing Quality Standard (WHQS).

Target Date

Data collection will take place throughout Spring and Summer 2025, with headline results scheduled for publication in Autumn and Winter 2025.

Lead

This work is being led by the Welsh Government.

Initiative

Welsh ministers have approved a business case to undertake a Welsh Housing Survey in 2027-28. This will be more detailed than the survey delivered in 2017-18 and will be broadly comparable to the English Housing Survey. It will comprise two parts: a detailed social survey to gather household information required for fuel poverty analysis (such as income), as well as housing experiences and views; and a physical home inspection carried out by a qualified surveyor to gather information on the fabric and condition of the home.

This approach will provide a wider breadth of evidence to more effectively inform policy development and implementation than a housing conditions survey alone. As well as providing detailed information on fuel poverty, energy performance of homes and housing quality across all tenures, it will also enable the gathering of evidence to better support affordable housing, second homes and homelessness policies.

Through engagement with key stakeholders, Welsh Government will develop a detailed tender specification so that a procurement exercise can commence by the end of 2025-26. This will enable field work to be carried out in 2027-28, with headline results available from 2028-29, and more detailed findings from 2029-30.

Target Date

We expect the tender specification to be completed by the end of 2025-26.

Lead

This work is being led by the Welsh Government.

Initiative

This long-term project will improve the coherence of statistics in England on additions to the affordable housing for rent sector and losses from it.

Target Date

This work is completed.

Lead

This work was being led by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).

Progress

The 2023 to 2024 edition of ‘Social Housing Sales and Demolitions in England’ now includes a new methodology on the net supply of affordable homes for rent, including new analysis breaking down net supply by tenure.

Initiative

Deliver a discussion article of the various sources of data on housing quality, their strengths and weaknesses and how the data should be used.

Target Date

This work is completed.

Lead

This work is being led by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).

Progress

Housing quality metrics in England: Coherence article was published on 28^th May 2025, alongside the Local Authority Stock Condition Modelling.

Initiative

In its next publication, the Local Authority Stock Condition Modelling will include estimates of dangerous damp and mould at a local authority level.

Target Date

This work is completed.

Lead

This work is being led by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).

Progress

Damp measures were published as part of the Housing quality metrics in England article.

Initiative

Update the Scottish homelessness data collection content and systems to better:

• reflect changes in homelessness policy, including homelessness prevention provisions within the Housing Bill
• meet user needs
• respond to emerging data needs, through increased flexibility within collection systems.

Target Date

The data specification will be issued to Local Authorities (LAs) in due course (exact timings TBC).

Lead

This work is being led by the Scottish Government.

Progress

This extensive project will aim to:

• identify the changes that will be needed to all homelessness and prevention data collection content to reflect current and future homelessness policy in Scotland
• identify any data gaps
• review data collection and processing system requirements,  this also includes exploring options for future systems, and developing and building these systems
• determine the feasibility of changes to collection content and systems, as well as assessing the quality implications of these changes.

Work to date has been considering refreshed content for statutory homelessness provisions. Further work is required to finalise homelessness prevention content. This is subject to the timings of the Housing Bill progressing through Parliament.

Initiative

Update the Evidence and Gap Map by conducting a review of studies that analyse the effectiveness of different interventions for improving the welfare of people experiencing homelessness.

Target Date

We expect this work will be completed by August 2025.

Lead

This work is being led by the Centre for Homelessness Impact (CHI) and Campbell Collaboration.

Initiative

Conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of 116 studies.

Target Date

We expect this work will be completed by July 2025.

Lead

This work is being led by the Centre for Homelessness Impact (CHI) and Cardiff University.

Initiative

Conduct a systematic review of nine studies of interventions including brief intervention, motivational interviewing, mindfulness, 12-step programme and group psychosocial interventions.

Target Date

We expect this work will be completed by May 2025.

Lead

This work is being led by the Centre for Homelessness Impact (CHI) and Manchester Metropolitan University.

Initiative

Develop and publish homeless deaths statistics for Northern Ireland based on death registrations.

Target Date

We expect this work will be completed by the end of 2025.

Lead

This work is being led by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA).

Progress

The report will cover the years 2020 to 2022 and is planned for release later in 2025.

Initiative

Publish a coherence article on homelessness across the UK.

Target Date

This work is completed

Lead

This work is being led by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Progress

A summary of trends in homelessness statistics across the four UK nations and the cross-UK comparability of the data was published on 11th June 2025.

Initiative

The ONS are undertaking a transformation of our statistics about private rental prices. This transformation work includes finding ways to:

• make better use of existing data sources
• improve methods and develop systems to provide more timely and detailed data.

We currently produce the Index of Private Housing Rental Prices (IPHRP) and the Private Rental Market Statistics (PRMS). But, in the future, we envisage our rental price statistics to be a new, single, monthly publication that provides a more detailed insight into the rental market.

Target Date

This work is completed.

Lead

This work was led by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Progress

From the March 2025 release onwards, the Price Index of Private Rents (PIPR) covers the UK, which enables us to produce average rent levels for Northern Ireland and the UK.

Initiative

Publish a coherence article on private rental sector policy and available data.

Target Date

We expect this work to be completed by September 2025.

Lead

This work is being led by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Progress

Following a detailed assessment of user need, two articles will be published together in September:

1. Private Rented Sector in the UK: 2025 – understanding policy and data landscape
2. Private Rented Sector in the UK: 2025 – key characteristics and data insights

Initiative

Publish a coherence article on empty homes across the UK.

Target Date

We expect this work to be completed in 2025/26.

Lead

This work is being led by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Progress

Initial scoping work has been completed, exploring coherence of empty homes data across the UK.

Initiative

Publish a blog that will explore available data about affordable housing across the UK.

Target Date

We expect this work to be completed in 2025/26.

Lead

This work is being led by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Progress

Initial scoping work has been completed, exploring coherence of affordable homes data across the UK. This piece of work will include updated policy guidance.

Initiative

The ONS will explore improving the methodology of our Subnational estimates of dwellings and households in England by tenure in order to publish more accurate statistics.

Target Date

We expect this work to be completed by late Spring 2025.

Lead

This work is being led by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Progress

The methodology work is ongoing and we expect to publish in late spring.

Initiative

Enhance the accessibility of the:

• Scottish Government Planning Performance Statistics publication (this is published twice a year)
• Scottish Vacant and Derelict Land Survey publication (this is published once a year)

Scottish Government are following the guidance produced by the Scottish Government Office of the Chief Statistician. We will concentrate on improving the accessibility of publication text, tables, and charts.

Target Date

This work is ongoing.

Lead

This work is being led by the Scottish Government.

Progress

Work is ongoing on the Scottish Vacant and Derelict Land Survey publication. Accessibility improvements will be made incrementally to each successive publication of the Annual Planning Performance Statistics publication.

Initiative

Work towards using RAP for producing publications in html.

Target Date

We expect this work to be completed by July 2026.

Lead

This work is being led by the Department for Infrastructure (Northern Ireland).

Initiative

The Northern Ireland Planning Monitoring Framework publication is being reviewed to:

• consider how to reduce the overall file size of the published document
• develop visuals
• work towards further meeting accessibility requirements
• engage with users

Target Date

This work is completed.

Lead

This work was led by the Department for Infrastructure (Northern Ireland).

Progress

Future releases of the Northern Ireland Planning Monitoring Framework will be in the form of excel tables only, accompanied with an accessible infographic.

Initiative

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) has developed the capability to host and publish Power BI products. We are using this capability to make our statistical publications more accessible and engaging for users.

Target Date

This work is completed.

Lead

This work was led by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).

Progress

MHCLG have introduced interactive data visualisation tools, or dashboards, as part of; our statistical publications on housing supply, dwelling stock, social housing lettings, planning applications, land use and green belt.

Initiative

Change the published statistical tables on housing and planning statistics to use formats that meet accessibility requirements and comply with accessibility legislation in England.

Target Date

We expect to complete this by December 2025.

Lead

This work is being led by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).

Progress

Progress has been made on this with a small number of tables left to be converted.

Initiative

Change the published statistical tables and other products on homelessness and rough sleeping to use formats that meet accessibility requirements.

Target Date

We expect the rough sleeping data tables to be published on 29th May 2025.

We expect the homelessness tables to be published by July 2025.

Lead

This work is being led by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).

Progress

New accessible rough sleeping data tables will be published on 29th May, for data up to March 2025. New accessible tables are in the pipeline for homelessness and will be updated on gov.uk by July 2025.

Initiative

Continue to publish and improve statistics on the deaths of people experiencing homelessness in Scotland.

Target Date

This work is ongoing.

Lead

This work is being led the National Records of Scotland (NRS).

Progress

Homeless Deaths in Scotland 2023 was published in November 2024. The next publication has a provisional publication date of November 2025. This publication will consider 2024 death registrations.

NRS hold regular meetings with other statistical producers to:

• share developments and ideas
• consider the UK coherence of statistics on the deaths of people experiencing homelessness

As part of the work to make continual improvements to this output, NRS are investigating a new data stream for the identification of homeless deaths in Scotland. This involves asking local authorities to report any known homeless deaths in the data they submit to NRS. This new data is currently being used as a quality assurance resource to strengthen the confidence we have in our existing data. NRS continue to assess the quality of this data and will consider whether it could be used as an additional data stream in our estimation model in the future.

Initiative

Continue to publish and improve statistics on the deaths of homeless people in England and Wales.

Target Date

This work started in October 2024, with timescales for delivery to TBC.

Lead

This work is being led by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Progress

A proposal to stop publishing these statistics was included in the consultation on Health and social care statistical outputs published by:

• Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), including Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID)
• NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA)
• UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA)
• Office for National Statistics (ONS)
• and NHS England.

However, following analysis of the feedback provided, this decision has now been reversed. Instead, an improvement programme of work to improve the quality of these statistics has started. This improvement programme started in October with a TBC delivery date.

Initiative

Explore the feasibility of introducing case level homelessness data in Wales.

Target Date

This work is ongoing.

Lead

This work is being led by the Welsh Government.

Progress

Welsh Government plan to start collecting case-level data during the first six months of 2026-27. Initially, this will be collected alongside the existing aggregate data to ensure they continue to collect robust data until the new system is rolled out. A phased approach is being taken, with initial focus on the ‘core’ variables (as currently collected on the aggregated form) during 2026-27. As the case-level data collection becomes established, the data specification will be expanded to include further variables in future phases of the project from 2027-28 onwards.

Initiative

Run a one-day conference on using evidence and data to accelerate an end to homelessness. A video library of past events is available, including topics on the role of private landlords in ending homelessness and exploring if modular housing is an effective solution to reduce homelessness.

Target Date

We expect this work will be completed by September 2025.

Lead

This work is being led by Centre for Homelessness Impact (CHI).

Initiative

Use Homelessness Case Level Collection (H-CLIC) data in England to improve the evidence base for homelessness through the:

• Homelessness Data England (HDE) project
• BOLD (Better Outcomes through Linked Data) shared outcomes project

Both projects facilitate the linking of H-CLIC data over time and across geographical boundaries. The projects have been enhanced with information from other government departments. This aims to help us develop our understanding of how households and individual people cycle in and out of homelessness over time and across the country.

The homelessness data linking projects have demonstrated what is possible to link in a complex system.

The first project on Repeat Homelessness has been published. Further reports linking other datasets to HCLIC data will be published in due course.

Target Date

This work is ongoing.

Lead

This work is being led by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).

Progress

The first report based on this linked dataset has now been published. Further reports are due in 2025.

Initiative

We aim to improve the quality, reliability and timeliness of our homelessness and rough sleeping statistics publications. This will enable us to increase capacity for analysis work.

Target Date

This work is ongoing.

Lead

This work is being led by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).

Progress

Work has started on RAP processes to be incorporated into homelessness statistics production. This will be realised over time and updated as we work through our Business as Usual (BAU) and ad hoc projects.

Initiative

Work to review and update the data specification to improve the quality of case level homelessness data.

Target Date

This work is ongoing.

Lead

This work is being led by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).

Progress

MHCLG are improving the quality of our engagement with Local Authorities (LAs) as well as IT suppliers to improve how and what data is captured and have launched a new suppliers engagement forum and aim to progress it over the next few months.

MHCLG have also started on a number of other related areas for homelessness statistics. For example, reducing the collection window to improve timeliness from April-June 2025 collection, reviewing the current methodology for imputation and weighting as well improving accessibility of tables and narrative within the release.

Initiative

Finalise plans and specifications for the analysis of data on housing and households from Scotland’s Census 2022. This will include Census data comparisons with:

• data from the previous censuses
• data from Census 2021 for the rest of the UK

Target Date

We expect this work to be completed in 2025/26.

Lead

This work is being led the National Records of Scotland (NRS).

Progress

The second release of multivariate data from Scotland’s Census 2022 took place on 26 March 2025. Detailed analysis of this data will be published later in 2025/26.

Initiative

Update the newly launched publicly available map of Scottish Vacant and Derelict Land Survey data with the latest data.

Target Date

This is complete and the map will be updated in Summer 2025.

Lead

This work was led by the Scottish Government.

Progress

The map of Scottish Vacant and Derelict Land Survey data has been published.

Initiative

Investigate sources to produce data on the EPC ratings of domestic properties in Northern Ireland.

Target Date

This work was completed in July 2024.

Lead

This work was led by the Department for Communities (Northern Ireland).

Progress

The Energy Rating of housing in Northern Ireland up to March 2023 was published in July 2024.

Initiative

Welsh Government will continue developing the Administrative data on Homes in Wales (AD|Homes) project, alongside developing a new housing survey.

Target Date

This work is ongoing.

Lead

This work is being led by the Welsh Government.

Progress

Welsh Government plan to publish an update to the Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) for Homes in Wales dashboard in May 2025. In the following months, they will release an article that explores the quality of data held on the EPC Register by comparing it to other data sources. The Welsh Government Data Science Unit is continuing to investigate the feasibility of using machine learning to develop a more representative EPC dataset for Wales.

Welsh Government have collaborated with local authorities and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to enhance the quality of council tax billing data collected for Wales. This data will be used to publish an analysis of council tax chargeable second and empty homes across Wales later in 2025.

Additionally, they are exploring how administrative data can support housing supply statistics and intend to publish an update on this work later in 2025.

Initiative

The net additional dwellings statistics for England are comprehensive and widely recognised and used, but are not available until 8 months after each financial year. We will create a new time series of early estimates of net additional dwellings, using quarterly and weekly data on Energy Performance Certificates for new dwellings, and publish these estimates quarterly in our Indicators of new housing supply statistics series.

Target Date

This work is completed.

Lead

This work was led by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).

Progress

A new time series of early estimates of net additional dwellings, using quarterly and weekly data on Energy Performance Certificates for new dwellings has been published.

Initiative

MHCLG will move data ingestion, storage and processing to the department’s strategic data store. This will help produce better quality statistics more efficiently.

Target Date

This work is completed.

Lead

This work led by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).

Progress

This work has enabled MHCLG to:

• introduce more automation
• reduce risks
• increase quality assurance and analysis work.

Initiative

For the 2023-24 and 2024-25 financial year, the EHS team has conducted three multimode fieldwork experiments for the English Housing Survey. MHCLG aim to implement the findings of this in the new contract for the EHS (2026 fieldwork onward).

Target Date

We expect implementation and the new contract to start October/ November 2025.

Lead

This work is being led by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).

Initiative

For 2025-2026, the EHS team are rolling out a pilot project for physical survey data collection on tablets (previously we used e-pens for data collection).

Target Date

Pilot project currently underway. MHCLG expect broader implementation to begin with the new EHS contract in October/ November 2026.

Lead

This work is being led by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).

Initiative

From 2024-2025 data, the consents for the EHS were updated to allow for matching to administrative data. MHCLG have a workplan associated with this, which will try to understand what data we can robustly match to.

Target Date

This work is ongoing.

Lead

This work is being led by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).

Initiative

Future iterations of our leasehold dwelling estimates will be produced via a Reproducible Analytical Pipeline (RAP). This will also support direct address matching and fuzzy matching (compares two data sets to determine how similar they are) to HM Land Registry leasehold data. MHCLG will also produce household level statistics on the lease term length of leasehold households.

Target Date

Leasehold estimates were completed using a RAP in May 2025. We expect data on lease length to be published in mid-July.

Lead

This work is being led by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).

Progress

Leasehold dwelling estimates were published on 22^nd May 2025. We expect data on lease length will be published until mid-July 2025.

Initiative

The ONS will work with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to assess the possibility and quality of publishing statistics on the number of first-time buyer mortgage sales at the local authority level across the UK.

Target Date

This work is completed.

Lead

This work was led by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in co-operation with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

Progress

Local Authority data for 2006 to 2023 was published on 18 March 2025.

Initiative

The ONS aim to improve the quality, reliability and timeliness of our housing statistics publications by following best practice from elements of RAP.

Target Date

We expect this work to be ongoing throughout 2025-26.

Lead

This work is being led by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Progress

The ONS have improved a number of processes to increase the quality and streamline the production of some of our statistics, we intend to continue to work on this in 2025-26.

Initiative

The Valuation Office Agency (VOA) will continually look to make improvements to both the quality and content of this annual release by incorporating feedback obtained from users. We currently publish our statistics on the gov.uk website as html narrative and Excel/csv files. We are looking possibly through the Integrated Data Service.

Target Date

This work is ongoing.

Lead

This work is being led by the Valuation Office Agency (VOA).

Progress

The VOA have identified changes and improvements that can be made as part of the introduction of new data and IT systems. Regular updates will be announced on the VOA statistics announcements page.

Initiative

Conduct further development of the Northern Ireland Homelessness bulletin to include additional statistics as identified through user engagement.

Target Date

We expect this work to be completed by December 2025.

Lead

This work is being led by the Department for Communities (Northern Ireland).