ONS Local presents: Challenge of measuring housing – Oxfordshire Spotlight

ONS Local has been established by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to support evidence-based decision-making at the local level. We aim to host insightful events that connect our users with exciting developments happening in subnational statistics and analysis at the ONS and across other organisations. This event will be presented by three teams: Dr Peter W. Walsh, Senior Researcher at The Migration Observatory and Departmental Lecturer in Migration Studies, University of Oxford; the ONS’ Housing Market Indices team; and Jaffa Holland, Housing Capacity Manager for Oxfordshire Migration Partnership.

This event brings together three expert teams working on analysing migration data, measuring rental prices, and placing vulnerable groups into private rented housing within the county of Oxfordshire respectively.

To begin the webinar, Dr Walsh will provide a broad statistical summary of post-Brexit humanitarian migration to the UK, covering the number of people claiming asylum, those granted status from an asylum claim, and those issued status under the UK refugee resettlement programmes, Ukraine schemes, Afghan schemes, and Hong Kong scheme for BNOs. He will also examine the geographical distribution of these groups, and the number in dispersal accommodation and hotels. This will set the background for the webinar.

Next, Aimee North, Head of Housing Market Indices at ONS, will provide an overview of ONS’ recent transformation of its private rental price statistics, rents data sources and outputs from its Price Index of Private Rents (PIPR) publication which includes rent price levels.

Finally, Jaffa Holland, Housing Capacity manager at South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse District Councill, will introduce and explain what the recently established Oxfordshire Migration Partnership has done to ensure maximum take up of private rented housing by vulnerable groups, partly achieved through the combination of different data sources, which have helped understand the local private rental market, and delivered place-based solutions through strategic oversight. Outcomes have included all property opportunities within Oxfordshire, at Local Housing Allowance or plus 10%, are fed through to the partnership and thus reaches wider cohorts of vulnerable households at risk of homelessness. This is an opportunity to understand the innovative analysis that has underpinned these achievements and how the Oxfordshire Migration Partnership has implemented effective networking to improve successful and suitable accommodation placements.

This event is open to all; we anticipate it will be of most interest to anyone working to assist vulnerable groups into LHA-compliant accommodation at the local level in the UK.

If you have any questions, please contact ons.local@ons.gov.uk.

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