Development of the National Register for Social Housing (NROSH) was started by the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) in 2004. NROSH aimed to be a database of all social housing properties in England, with a range of details captured on each property. NROSH was transferred to the Tenant Services Authority, the social housing regulator, in April 2010 and was discontinued in May 2011. Ownership of the latest NROSH dataset passed from the TSA to the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) when responsibility for social housing regulation passed to the Regulation Committee of the HCA in April 2012.
In addition to being out of date, the records submitted by social landlords to NROSH are of varying quantity and quality with many incomplete, inaccurate or missing records. The database may also contain a number of duplicate entries.
Two datasets are available. One is the latest NROSH database held by the HCA as at May 2011. This release contains a large subset of the full NROSH dataset (48 from 201 fields in total; for 4,826,417 unique property records). The data in this release does not include those fields where data could enable specific identification of vulnerable people or other sensitive personal data. It also excludes fields where a minimum completion threshold is not met (generally fields where less than 25% of records have data). There are still issues of quality, incomplete data, and potential duplication of records in the data that accompanies this release that HCA is not able to resolve.
Additional information, including data that falls below the minimum quality thresholds for this release, may be requested from the HCA (Referrals & Regulatory Enquiries Team, mail@homesandcommunities.co.uk).
The 48 fields included in this release are summarised and described in the two tables accompanying this metadata. The data is contained in five compressed single CSV files: NROSH Data Extract Part 1; - 2; - 3; -4 and -5. Due to the large volume of records, analysis will require database software (MS Excel will not support analysis).
Also available is a snapshot of the NROSH database held by DCLG as at March 2010. The data is that which was reported by social landlords in line with the system specifications and includes a selected set of fields on property address, type of accommodation, form of structure, number of rooms and bedspaces are included.