Summary

Description

This data set contains data on house building starts. House building data are collected at local authority district level, but it is important to treat figures at this level with care. House building is unevenly distributed both geographically and over time and patterns of housing development can produce clusters of new homes which make the figures at a low geographic level volatile and difficult to interpret. For detailed definitions of all tenures, see definitions of housing terms on Housing Statistics The district level and county figures are as reported by local authorities and the NHBC. Where a local authority has not submitted a quarterly return to DCLG, no figure has been presented for this local authority (and when relevant its county) for any 12-month period that includes the missing quarter. England total figures include estimates for missing data returns from independend Approved Inspectors and Local Authorities, so the sum of distict values may be slightlyless than the England totals. House building starts – A dwelling is counted as started on the date work begins on the laying of the foundation, including 'slabbing' for houses that require it, but not including site preparation. Thus when foundation work commences on a pair of semi-detached houses two houses are counted as started, and when work begins on a block of flats all the dwellings in that block are counted as started. The starts of houses in building schemes are usually phased over a period of weeks or even, in very large schemes, months. Tenure – For the purposes of these statistics, the term tenure refers to the nature of the organisa-tion responsible for the development of a new housing start or completion. It does not necessarily describe the terms of occupancy for the dwelling on completion. For example, some housing as-sociations develop homes for sale on the open market. Such homes would be reported in the Housing Association tenure of these statistics, but would ultimately most likely be owned and oc-cupied in the private sector. Housing association - “Housing associations (HAs)” has been used as the generic name for all social landlords not covered by local authorities (see below). In previous editions HAs were referred to as Registered Social Landlords (RSL), and the technical term (private) Registered Provider (pRP) of social housing is also sometimes used. The more all-encompassing description of ‘housing associations’ is now seen as more helpful to users of these statistics. This data set contains unrounded figures, rounded figures are available in Table 253, available for download as an [Excel spreadsheet](https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/311426/LiveTable253.xlsx).