About these tools
- Contact:
- gss.housing@ons.gov.uk
- Version:
- 1.2.0
- Updated:
- Fri 11 August 2023
Table of contents
Housing and planning statistics covers a wide range of topics that are of vital importance to the UK.
Are we building enough houses, in the right places, for our growing population? Are UK homes in good condition for inhabitants and not over-crowded? Can I afford to buy a local home? Are we providing enough safe accommodation for the most vulnerable in our society?
These are some of the questions asked by policy-makers, researchers, and the general public. Official statistics produced by government bodies can help answer these questions.
In the UK, housing and planning policy is a devolved matter. This means that each country legislates and collects statistics based on its needs.
Yet each country may also have several bodies responsible for producing these statistics. Across the UK, there are many such public bodies which publish housing-related statistics.
This can make finding data on a particular topic difficult. Who produces the statistics I want, covering the area that I want? How far back in time do these datasets go and how often are they produced? Am I limited to national data or can I get a picture of what issues are like in my local authority?
Finding out answers to these questions can be hard for a person who is new to the landscape of housing statistics in the UK.
In November 2017, the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) published a review of housing and planning statistics in the UK.
In that report, the OSR identified the findability, usability, and coherence of statistics as some key areas to improve. In response, members of the Government Statistical Service (GSS) formed a cross-Government housing and planning statistics working group (HPWG) to help tackle the issues raised.
These working groups includes representatives from:
- Department for Finance (Northern Ireland)
- Department for Infrastructure
- Department for Communities (Northern Ireland)
- Department for Energy Security and Net Zero
- Homes England
- Land Registry
- Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities
- National Records of Scotland
- Northern Ireland Housing Executive
- Office for National Statistics
- Registers of Scotland
- Scottish Government
- Valuation Office Agency
- Welsh Government
To find out more about the work the HPWG do on housing and planning statistics, please visit the GSS Housing and Planning webpage.
The tools found here are the culmination of joined-up working between analysts from across government. Designed and built for you, these tools aim to improve the ease of access to official housing statistics.
The interactive housing statistics landscape consists of many different topic areas. For example, homelessness, social housing, or house-building. Topics areas can relate to one another and, in most cases, will have official statistics already available.
Using the landscape, you will be able to:
- Find the definitions for each of these topic areas
- See how these topic areas relate to each other
- Find links to statistics belonging to the topic area of interest
Some housing topic areas may not have any available Official statistics. In such cases, third-party organisations may collect this information.
For example, private companies which broker peer-to-peer lettings will collect related statistics. Tenancy deposit schemes, administered by private organisations, will also collect related data.
This tool is limited to official statistics, so we do not direct users to non-Official statistics, even if they do exist.
If you want to search for Official housing statistics, our database will help. We aim to have links to all official data published relating to housing in the UK. If you think we have missed any relevant statistics, please let us know. The database covers housing outputs from many different government departments, agencies, and public bodies.
You can filter the results based on your search criteria. Available filters include topic area, data source, and geographic coverage. To find out more on how to use the database, visit the database webpage.
For users interested in exploring non-Official statistics, we recommend the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence (CaCHE) Data Navigator.
If you have any ideas on how we can improve our tools, or want to notify us of any missing information, please contact us.