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The English Housing Survey - which housing minister Brandon Lewis says has an excessive cost at £4m a year - has received a ringing endorsement from landlords.

The Residential Landlords Association has written to the Department of Communities and Local Government to say that the survey - which issued its latest findings this week - is a vital source of housing information and statistics, but particularly for statistics on the Private Rented Sector.

A letter to the DCLG from John Stewart, policy and communications officer at the RLA, says the survey is the only independent source of PRS statistics, and allows ready comparison between the PRS and other tenures.

It goes on: There is severe gap in information gathered about the PRS, meaning those researching the sector must rely on partisan statistics gathered through opinion polls and surveys carried out on behalf of housing and homeless charities or published by letting agents and other professional bodies. Alternatively, information must be garnered through lengthy and time-consuming Freedom of Information requests to local authorities and other public bodies.

Perhaps to the dismay of cost-cutters at the DCLG, the RLA says would prefer the scope of the survey to be increased rather than decreased, to gather genuinely independent data on issues such as retaliatory eviction, where no independent data is currently available.

The RLA does not believe the frequency or scope of the survey should be reduced, particularly at a time of such heightened interest in housing generally, and growth and change within the PRS in particular says Stewart.

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