THE rental data used to calculate Jersey’s inflation rate will become unsuitable within a couple of years, the Island’s Chief Statistician has warned – with no budget currently available for a replacement survey.
Ian Cope said the pool of households used to track changes in private rents, which account for 10% of the Retail Prices Index, had fallen sharply and was expected to shrink further.
In a submission to the Corporate Services Scrutiny Panel’s review of the proposed Budget for 2027–2030, he outlined two possible solutions: requiring landlords to report their rents to government or introducing a compulsory quarterly survey costing around £100,000 a year.
Statistics Jersey currently relies on information about rents paid directly to landlords by Social Security on behalf of Income Support recipients.
The number of households covered has fallen from around 2,400 in March 2011 to about 955 in March this year, partly because eligibility for Andium social housing has expanded.
“This trend is expected to continue so that within a couple of years this source will not be suitable for use in the RPI,” said Mr Cope.
Although these rents are known to be below the market average, he said changes broadly followed movements in advertised private rents.
One option would be for the Housing Minister to require landlords to notify government of their rents. This could provide high-quality information at low cost to Statistics Jersey, although it would place a burden on all landlords.
Alternatively, a compulsory survey could use the rented dwelling licensing scheme to select landlords to take part.
“If Statistics Jersey must fund a private rentals survey to provide data for the RPI, we currently don’t have the budget for that,” said Mr Cope.
He also revealed that a legally required programme of reviews of key statistics had not progressed because of a lack of administrative support. A request for additional resources was rejected last year.
However, Mr Cope said the proposed annual core budget of £1.963 million was sufficient to maintain regular statistical publications and small-scale developments.
Separately, funding has been confirmed for a year-long survey of household income and spending, starting next spring. Income distribution statistics are expected at the end of 2028.
The survey may start around a month later than planned to spread costs, which would delay its results by the same amount.
