The Rental Accommodation Scheme (RAS) placed responsibility on local authorities to meet the accommodation needs of people in receipt of Rent Supplement for 18 months or longer, and who are assessed as having a long-term housing need. The RAS meets long-term housing need through the use of private rented accommodation.RAS is a form of social housing support provided by all local authorities

Under the RAS scheme, the Departments recoups to local authorities the cost of RAS contracts with private landlords and AHBs, administration costs and deposits on newly acquired accommodation. Data contained within this overall Scheme dataset relates to the entire scheme and is held by each local authority according to their individual jurisdictional areas and includes details on eligible social housing tenants, private sector landlords, approved housing bodies tenancy unit addresses and rents collected from tenants and paid to landlords/AHBs. RAS Section holds summary scheme information only (see column F)