Housing statistics quarterly update: June 2021

2. Delays to new housebuilding statistics due to COVID-19, and estimates made for a small number of authorities

The Housing Statistics for Scotland Quarterly Update as at June would usually include an update on private-led and all-sector new house building starts and completions to end December in the preceding year, with more recent figures on social sector new builds to end March. However due to COVID-19 related delays in new build data provision over the last year, this publication includes figures on private-led and all-sector new house building starts and completions only up to end June 2020, with more recent figures on social sector new builds only up to end September 2020.

Given these delays in the reporting of new housebuilding trends, separate figures from the UK House Price Index on new build sales transactions are provided in Section 5 as an alternative measure of private-led new housebuilding activity in Scotland over the more recent period to end January 2021.

In addition to these delays in provision of data, East Dunbartonshire Council has been unable so far to provide any private-led new build data since the start of the pandemic period. We have therefore estimated the number of private-led new build starts and completions for the East Dunbartonshire local authority area for the three quarters 2019 Q4 to 2020 Q2. Glasgow City Council has also been unable so far to provide new build starts data for the three quarters from 2019 Q4 to 2020 Q2, and so we have estimated the number of private-led starts for the Glasgow local authority area across these three quarters. However we are working with Glasgow to obtain these figures and aim to replace these estimates with actual figures in future publications once the data is provided. In addition we have estimated private-led new build starts and completions figures for Angus for the most recent quarter 2020 Q2 due to a delay in provision of this data.

As with previous publications, the estimates of private-led new build activity are based on an average of the previous four quarters, with an adjustment made for 2020 Q2 to account for the lower levels of construction activity seen in this quarter due to the impact of COVID-19. This adjustment is based on aggregate trends from the local authorities who provided data for 2020 Q2.

This publication also includes some revisions to previously published figures due to more recent updated figures that have been supplied. Figures have been revised to replace previous estimations for Dundee City private-led starts and completions (2020 Q1) and also for private sector led completions for Glasgow in the three quarters from 2019 Q4 to 2020 Q2. In addition, the local authority starts and completion figures for East Dunbartonshire for 2020 Q2 have been revised to incorporate a correction to this return as provided recently by East Dunbartonshire Council. A small number of additional historic corrections provided by local authorities have also been made, for which further details are available in the Excel tables.