United Kingdom - Residential Building Completions

Statistical release showing the provisional number of dwelling starts and completions (residential stage of construction), in the U.K. and its regions and districts, quarterly and annual.

• Typologies:
  • Owner: Private enterprise, registered social landlord, local authority
• Measurement: Unitary count (#)
• Adjustments:
  • Seasonally adjusted (SA)
  • Neasonally adjusted (NSA)
• Native frequencies: Quarterly, annual
• Start dates:
• Geo coverage:
  • Eurostat-type areas:
    • NUTS 1 areas (9x IGBR_aaaa)
    • LAU (2013) level 1 areas (IGBR_E0n000nnn)
  • ONS-type areas:
    • Country (4x IGBR_aaaa)
    • Country-level aggregate (IGBR_X and IGBR_ENGW)
    • Region (9x, IGBR_aaaa)
    • County (27x, IGBR_E100000nn)
    • Local authority district (LAD) (over 300, IGBR_Enn000nnn)

Construction started

A house or flat 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 2 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.

The figures shown for starts are derived from records kept for building control purposes. It is sometimes difficult for data providers to identify whether a dwelling is being built for a Registered Social Landlord or for a private developer. This is because sometimes the builders themselves are not sure of the precise ownership or the ownership may keep evolving and it is not final until it was sold. This may lead to an understatement of Registered Social Landlord starts and completions recorded in these tables, and a corresponding overstatement of private enterprise figures. The problem is more likely to occur with starts than completions.

Constructions completed

In principle, a dwelling is regarded as completed when it becomes ready for occupation or when a completion certificate is issued whether it is in fact occupied or not. In practice, there are instances where the timing could be delayed and some completions are missed for example as no completion certificate was requested by the owner.

Corpus changes

National and regional totals are reported only in annual frequency and were terminated in 2012.

A change to administrative geographies was implemented between 2019Q1 and Q2.

Moody's Analytics data translation

The source shows "-" wherever the value is less than 5. We translate this to "ND".