Calculating my figures

There is no 'perfect' calculation of exactly how many 'dwelling units' are proposed across the town of Lewes, as developments and proposals are at various stages, from the near-conclusion of Baxters through the detailed but not formalised proposals for North Street/Phoenix and Wenban-Smith to the early stage ideas for, say, the Harveys Pinwell Lane site. But the best attempt at this that I've seen has been circulated by the Friends of Lewes. It is really quite conservative in its estimates so, if anything, my figures could even be exceeded. This calculation estimates the total number of units to be 1317. 59% of this is the well established figure of 775 homes for the Angel Properties North Street/Phoenix proposal and I believe another 30% of the estimate is pretty cut-and-dried, so only a small minority is more speculative and, as I say, is conservatively so.

To extrapolate the number of new citizens from this 1317, I turn to the Government's own figures available online at the National Office of Statistics website. I've made two assumptions here: (a) that the proposed homes are not retirement ones, and therefore the inhabitants of these new homes would non-retired households, and (b) that the households would fit the average norms in terms of income, family sizes etc. I believe both assumptions are perfectly reasonable.

The calculations of the household sizes, number of working adults, numbers of children etc, are based on the years 2003/4 (the most recent I could locate) and the basis for the calculations can be found here. This document tells us that average number of people per household is 2.7 (2.7 x 1317 = 3560, which I've rounded down to 3,500) and goes on to break these figures down.

The calculations of cars per household are based on the 2001 census and the basis can be found here, where we learn how many households have one car, how many have two and so forth.