The House Building Inquiry dataset contains monthly and quarterly data collected by various housing statistics sections of the (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) ODPM and its predecessor departments relating to house building. The purpose of the House Building return was to collect information about new dwellings from Local Authorities' Building Control Departments. The return measured starts and completions of all construction jobs. The data was organised by tenure of the property (private sector, Registered Social Landlords, Local Authority).
This information was combined with parallel data collected from the National House Building Council (NHBC), and thus used to provide estimates of all new house building activity in the local authority area. Figures for each authority were added to others to give regional and national house building figures. The NHBC provided monthly data to the Department in respect of the dwellings that they inspected for Building Control purposes, and they provided listings by site to every local authority district in England.
This was key information for the Government and the media. House building starts were considered to be a key indicator of economic conditions generally, and about the construction industry and housing market in particular. The data was provided as part of the brief for the Monetary Policy Committee. Completions showed how the demand was being met and how they added to the nation's stock.
The data related to new permanent dwellings only; that is, dwellings which were expected to maintain their stability indefinitely. The data was collected using the monthly P2 and P2M forms for the period January 1980 - March 2003. After April 2003, the P2Q form replaced the P2M form. NHBC's return remained monthly, despite this change.
This dataset covers the period January 1980 to March 2005. It holds detailed P2 monthly return data for January 1980 - March 1998; reduced P2M monthly return data for April 1998 - March 2003; and P2 quarterly return data for June 2003 - March 2005.
The datasets in this series are available to download. Links to individual datasets can be found at piece level.