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@richardjmurphy spouts bollocks

Where he got this number from I\’ve no idea at all:

\"Richard

@RichardJMurphy Richard Murphy
Want to know why we\’re in recession? Just 454 affordable homes were built in first 6 months of this year. That\’s why. That\’s Torytown.
Housing statistics are here. I\’m using for England alone.
We generally assume that \”affordable housing\” os social plus local council housing. That\’s the way the word is most commonly used by leftoids at least.
However, of course that isn\’t true. \”Affordable\” means \”capable of being afforded\” and thus all houses that sell are affordable. So, taking the real meaning, the housing numbers for England for the first 6 months of this year are:
Starts: 49,330.
Completions: 56,190.
But OK, let\’s use the usual leftoid definition, association plus local council. The the numbers are:
Starts: 11,550
Completions: 14,030
But let\’s imagine that Ritchie is using an even more restrictive meaning of \”affordable\”, is local council only. Then the figures are:
Starts: 970
Completions: 1,290.
There just isn\’t any number at all that gives us 454 of any form of tenure home built in those 6 months.
Even if you look through the regional numbers, the devolved administrations, there just isn\’t any set of numbers at all that add up to 454.
So, which orifice has this 454 been pulled from then?
Update: All is explained here. The numpties are claiming that the 454 built under specific central government schemes are all the affordable housing that has been built. But it ain\’t so.

8 thoughts on “@richardjmurphy spouts bollocks”

  1. Frances Coppola

    Quite apart from the mythical number, how on earth does RM manage to deduce that the UK is in recession (which it isn’t, yet) solely because of a low number of affordable housing completions?

  2. FlatEric

    Hmmm…probably wrong, dodgy-looking number supplied without context.

    My first thought was Eoin.

    And I was right.

  4. Andrew

    The 454 number does seem to be right. I presume he garnered it from the Grauniad here. The original statistics are here. From the story, and the HCA release it seems the stall is mainly to do with contract negotiations as the the HCA changes from the 2008-2011 National Affordable Homes Programme to the 2011-2015 Affordable Homes Programme.

    As much as I love “Ragging on Ritchie” I found these by googling ‘454 affordable homes built’. If you’d done that first you could have posted this as a story of bureaucracy ballsing up the housing market and the Murph wouldn’t have been able to snort at you on twitter…

  6. Richard

    Something odd here.

    Tim’s stats say that there were 9,760 house building starts in that 6 months by housing associations and local councils:
    http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/statistics/pdf/2030989.pdf
    Table 2a

    Andrew’s stats, reported in the Guardian, say that there were only 1,746 house building starts for the same period (of which the vast majority were for market value sale or rent, so don’t count as “affordable”).
    http://www.homesandcommunities.co.uk/sites/default/files/aboutus/official-statistics-release-221111.pdf
    Table 1a

    Either the first lot of statistics have invented 8,000 new homes, or the second set have missed out 8,000 new homes.

    One possible explanation – the second set (with the 454 figure) is for homes funded by the HCA. However each year there are between 5,000 and 10,000 “affordable” homes built that aren’t funded by the HCA; either through some other public sector grant or the compulsory “affordable” homes that developers have to build as part of the process of getting planning permission.

    See here for previous years (no data yet for this year):
    http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/housing/xls/2001262.xls

    I suspect that’s where the missing 8,000 are.

  7. Richard

    Arnald, before you start gloating over Tim’s cock, see #6 above. It looks like Murphy’s figures may have missed out 8,000 new “affordable” homes.

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