§ Mr. Fatchettasked the Secretary of State for the Environment, further to his reply of 25 June, Official Report, column 227, why his Department currently makes no estimates on either a national or regional basis of the shortfall between the demand for and the supply of public rented accommodation to meet both general and special needs which cannot be met by other means.
§ Sir George YoungSuch estimates would depend on assumption about the relationships between different sectors of the housing market which may or may not hold true over time.
§ Mr. Fatchettasked the Secretary of State for the Environment what research his Department has carried out concerning (a) the ages at which young people leave their parental home, (b) the circumstances in which young people leave their parental home and (c) those factors influencing when young people leave their parental home; and what assessment his Department has undertaken of the implications of this information for (i) the demand for and (ii) the supply of public rented housing in England as a whole, and in each regional area of his Department.
§ Sir George YoungProjections of the number of households, which are one factor influencing demand for housing, are published periodically by my Department for England, regions, counties, metropolitan districts and London boroughs.
The base data for these projections include census information about the proportion of young people living as independent households. My Department also helped fund the 1981 survey of the national child development 323W study cohort, and this included questions on the ages at which members of the cohort, born 1958, had left their parental home, and the circumstances.