Northern Ireland Housing Market Areas
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NORTHERN IRELAND HOUSING MARKET AREAS Gillian Young Tony O’Sullivan Kenneth Gibb NORTHERN IRELAND HOUSING MARKET AREAS Gillian Young Tony O’Sullivan 1 Kenneth Gibb 2 3 contents Acknowledgements 4 Executive Summary 5 Introduction 7 Background, Context and Study Methods 8 Recent Migration Patterns in Northern Ireland 13 Craigavon and Newry 26 Belfast Metropolitan Area and Beyond 38 Coleraine and Ballymena 51 Derry, Limavady and Strabane 61 Omagh, Mid-Ulster, Dungannon and Enniskillen 69 Interpreting Results 79 Conclusions and Recommendations 83 Appendix 1: Alternative Approaches for Establishing HNAs 89 Appendix 2: Using the Census for HMA Definition in Northern Ireland 91 Appendix 3: Using CHI data for HMA Definition in Northern Ireland 106 Appendix 4: Census Supporting Tables 118 4 Acknowledgements The research team would like to acknowledge those who kindly offered their time and expertise through structured discussions and making data sources available to enable the research team to gain a comprehensive insight into the housing market in Northern Ireland. Mr S Martin, DSD Mr D Marshall, NISRA Ms B Muldoon, NISRA Mr S Fitzpatrick, CSA Mr I Raphael, DRD Mr P Mullaney, DOE Ms L Brown, University of Ulster Prof S McGreal, University of Ulster The research team would also like to thank the Northern Ireland Housing Executive for their efforts in securing data access and providing feedback and support on the project. Esther Christie, Stephen Semple and all in Area Planning Teams, Northern Ireland Housing Executive. Joe Frey and Patrice Carmichael, Research Unit, Northern Ireland Housing Executive. Census output is Crown copyright and is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen’s Printer for Scotland. 5 executive • This report presents the findings of a study into the structure of housing market areas (HMA) across Northern Ireland. • The study was commissioned by the Northern Ireland Housing Executive in order to provide a suitable spatial framework for subsequent housing analysis and strategy development. • A housing market area is defined as a geographical area where most people both live and work and where most people moving home (without changing job) seek a house. • HMA can overlap, and often do not marry well with local authority boundaries. Moreover, they are dynamic and HMA boundaries can change over time. • The main data used in this study were: Travel To Work Area (TTWA) boundaries produced by the Office of National Statistics; market area boundaries produced by Land and Property Services; 2001 Census data for both Northern Ireland and for the Republic of Ireland, Central Health Index (general practitioner registration) data for 2004-2007, survey evidence on household movement patterns from questions included in the May and September 2008 editions of the Northern Ireland Omnibus Survey, and the expert knowledge of key stakeholders. • Broadly, the central approach adopted to defining HMA involved first examining the suitability of 2001 TTWA commuting boundaries for this purpose by calculating their degree of ‘self containment’ using housing migration-based Census data, and subsequently amending these where appropriate based on local area movement flows derived from Central Health Index (CHI) data. The final HMA boundaries also take survey data findings and the key stakeholder views on the initial proposals into account. • A threshold of 67% for self-containment was used for determining if a TTWA was suitable for use as a HMA. This threshold is consistent with that used to identify TTWA in Northern Ireland and is consistent with practice elsewhere in the UK. In making subsequent amendments to determine the final HMA boundaries, a local area was generally concluded to be part of a wider HMA if migration flows between the two were greater than 10%, which is also consistent with practice elsewhere. However, to reflect the distinctive nature and much greater size of Belfast, the threshold used for classifying residential migration flows between it and other areas was set at 20%. 6 • On the basis of the analysis conducted we have concluded there are 11 major HMAs operating across Northern Ireland: • Over time the Belfast HMA has been extending its influence northwards and southwards into adjacent TTWAs. It now includes all of Larne local government district (LGD), and all but 1 ward of Antrim LGD • To the south of the Belfast HMA lie the two distinctive housing market areas centred on Craigavon and Newry respectively, although both are subject to some degree of overlap with the Belfast HMA. • The Ballymena housing market is more tightly drawn than the corresponding TTWA, and is subject to growing influence from the Belfast housing market • The Coleraine housing market extends beyond the Coleraine TTWA and includes the whole of Coleraine LGD and almost all of Ballymoney LGD, and Moyle LGD. However a few more remote wards in the south of both LGDs remain somewhat more connected to the Ballymena housing market. • The housing market boundaries of both Derry and Strabane are aligned with their respective TTWA’s. • The four TTWA’s covering Omagh, Mid-Ulster, Dungannon and Enniskillen respectively each provides a reasonable approximation of the respective overarching housing market areas in this part of Northern Ireland. • However, it is also important to point out that there are some rural areas and communities in some of these proposed housing market areas that show very little connection to the nearest local employment centre or elsewhere in Northern Ireland. Although for practical reasons it makes sense to include them in a housing market area, we would caution that future analysis and policy should take account of the unaligned character of these localities. • The extensive consultation carried out with stakeholders from a wide range of policy, practice and academic backgrounds. This demonstrated broad agreement with the approach taken and the specific boundaries derived through this study. 7 introduction This report presents the findings of a study into the structure of Housing Market Areas (HMAs) across Northern Ireland. The study was commissioned by the Northern Ireland Housing Executive in order to provide a suitable spatial framework for subsequent housing analysis and strategy development. The report is structured as follows: • In section 2, we explain the background to and context for the study. This section also summarises the research strategy used to define HMAs. • Section 3 describes residential movement patterns within Northern Ireland using data covering different periods from 2000 to 2008. • Sections 4 to 8 look in detail at the structure of HMAs in different parts of the province. Collectively, these cover Northern Ireland as a whole. • Section 9 presents and assesses the views of key stakeholders on the proposed HMAs. • Section 10 summarises the main outcomes of the research and makes a number of recommendations regarding next steps. In addition, the report contains a number of appendices: • Appendix 1 summarises the strengths and limitations of the main methods used to define housing market areas across the UK. • Appendix 2 details a number of issues relating to using Census data for exploring HMA structure in Northern Ireland. • Appendix 3 discusses the Central Health Index (CHI) and provides a more technical exposition of the method used to analyse CHI data within the study. • Appendix 4 provides a number of supporting tables that summarise Census 2001 migration flows. • Appendix 5 includes several tables that summarise CHI migration flows. 8 background, context study methods Why is the definition of housing markets of relevance? Politicians and public administrators demarcate geographic areas for a variety of reasons. Often this relates to the delivery of policy priorities or to the collection of data. Such areas do not usually figure largely in the minds of people going about their everyday business, although this does not always matter. However sometimes it can matter a great deal, and housing is a policy area where this can be the case. Research has shown that people have both implicit and explicit understandings of the spatial structure of local housing systems and these do not always conform to formal and administrative boundaries imposed by national and local government. In these circumstances, failing to recognise the ‘functional’ geographies that people use to inform their housing decisions can lead to policy outcomes at variance to those expected or sought. For instance, land release to meet housing demand may have unintended consequences if the site is in a different functional market area to the administrative area governing the planners’ decisions. For this reason, understanding how people see local housing areas in spatial terms - identifying Housing Market Areas (HMAs) - is an important input to effective policy action. The Policy Context Several considerations led to the commissioning of this project. First, the Semple Affordability Review (Semple, 2007), and parallel research by the Universities of Glasgow and Ulster (Gibb, et al, 2007), both showed the need for a clearer analytical basis for understanding the operation of local housing markets in Northern Ireland. A further study recommended that Northern Ireland embrace current Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) housing market assessment methodology and position housing needs assessment work already carried out in Northern Ireland within this broader framework (Palmer, 2007). This, in turn