Although we have always known that housing markets operate over a wider area than purely local authority boundaries, housing assessments in the past have mainly focused at individual authority level. Additionally the major requirement has been to identify the scale and nature of housing need rather than the requirement for housing across all sectors of the market to address the needs of the whole community.

In March 2007, CLG published Practice Guidance on Housing Market Assessments. Most local authorities now need to work together with neighbours within a sub-regional context and to assess their whole housing market, analysing both demand as well as need.

New Guidance requires local authorities to understand the operation of the private sector housing market and appreciate the impact of changes in the key drivers of the market sector on both housing demand and need.

DCA have significant expertise in all aspects of the private sector market having already undertaken over 225 housing market and needs assessment surveys over the last 16 years. All our assessment surveys have gathered a wealth of data on the private sector but study briefs always focussed the need for recommendations on housing strategy issues and affordable housing to support targets for planning purposes.

Prior to the creation of DCA in 1990, David Couttie spent over 25 years at the Halifax Building Society ultimately responsible for Housing Policy and Mortgage Lending and introduced fixed-rate mortgages into the UK housing market and private finance into social housing for the first time.

The current housing market conditions in 2006 are very similar to those in the 1990s where new households were priced out of house purchase. David Couttie led a team at the Halifax which developed and supported many new initiatives in the "intermediate" market as well as the first ever private funding of social housing on a significant scale.

DCA are therefore uniquely placed with expertise at national policy level across all sectors to undertake housing market assessments for local authorities.

Our recent experience of Housing Market Assessments includes the Plymouth HMA, the first pilot test of a sub-regional HMA in the South West to be completed. We also recently completed a Housing Needs and Market Assessment for Southampton City Council, working with SEERA and its Social Housing Partnership, to develop a Regional Pilot as an example which can be marketed and adopted as a new approach for Housing Needs and Market Assessments. The study tested the ODPM (now CLG) draft methodology for undertaking Local Housing Assessments, published in March 2005 and now superseded by published HMA Guidance.

We have recently been appointed to conduct the Salisbury Housing Market Assessment. Salisbury has been determined as a single housing market area, and we are conducting a Market and Needs Assessment using primary and secondary data to provide key information for the Local Development Framework and future housing strategy.

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