EAC Data on UK retirement housing is unique and respected as authoritative and independent. We licence data for use by housing planners, developers, investors and researchers.
EAC’s National Database of Housing for Older People includes information on 25,400 ‘age exclusive’ developments across the UK. The product of 30 years of intensive and ongoing work, this now provides the most comprehensive picture available of both historical and current supply of all forms of ‘retirement’ housing in the UK.
Created initially to underpin EAC’s free, independent and impartial ‘housing options’ advice service to older people, the database has become a key source of income for the charity, enabling us to maintain a core service without grant funding.
We are the first to explain that the EAC database will never be perfect. Whilst a minority of housing developers and managers have supported its creation from the outset, many resisted the work required by our early questionnaires, and some were openly hostile. Compiling and maintaining the database is more accurately described as ‘sleuthing’ than research. Often our picture of an individual development is a composite of information gathered over time from multiple sources.
However we are confident, based on the feedback we receive from those who use the data, that it provides the only detailed picture of the entire retirement housing sector, and a foundation upon which more detailed research into specific parts of the market can be undertaken.
The database includes:
We attempt to capture over 200 pieces of data on each scheme, and do so for many newer developments. However it usually isn’t possible to do this for older schemes, and so our standard EAC Data product is limited to those 65 data fields for which data is more generally available.
Schemes are broadly classified using EAC’s four working classifications: Age exclusive, Retirement/sheltered, Housing-with-care and Extra care. However users can cut the data in many ways, depending on their interests or business needs.
Just over 2,000 landlords and managers are identified, and almost as many developers (though many of the latter are now of historic interest only).
For each scheme location data includes postcodes, grid references, lats/longs, housing and social service authorities, ceremonial county and region.
Information on properties within each development includes mix of sizes (no. of bedrooms) and tenures(s). Communal facilities are identified via 16 true/false data fields plus a freeform field for any non-standard facilities. An overview of staffing, the most frequently changing aspect of schemes across the board, is provided in free text format.
All entries include the URL of the page on EAC’s HousingCare website which provides additional ‘soft’ data, often including the landlord or manager’s descriptive text, photos, brochures and (where applicable) care service inspection ratings and reports.
Licences to use EAC Data are subject to a simple Licence Agreement intended to protect EAC’s intellectual property, as far as this is possible, and to cater for small, single project uses as well as larger scale and multiple uses. EAC Data is now widely regarded as the only independent and authoritative source of data on retirement housing supply in the UK. In the end we rely mainly on mutual trust between EAC and its customers to safeguard this asset.
