Proposals for housing data collections and statistical outputs 2021-22

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of the housing data collections and statistical outputs regularly produced by the Welsh Government were cancelled or postponed during 2020.

In early 2021, the data collection team and the housing statistics team within the Welsh Government held a series of discussions with policy colleagues to determine ongoing evidence requirements and review the data submission/publication timetable for 2021-22 (capturing data for the 2020-21 period).

Consideration was given to when data on various topics was needed during the year, the burden placed on data providers and the data collection team, as well as how the order affects the validation between different collections. 

This paper summarises a set of proposals arising from these discussions and seeks feedback from Housing Information Group attendees.

We are proposing the following changes to Welsh Government housing data collections and statistical releases for 2021-22:

• Homelessness accommodation / rough sleeper management information will continue to be collected from local authorities and published on a monthly basis until at least March 2022.
• The annual 2020-21 statutory homelessness collection and release will be undertaken with some data tables removed. Data will not be requested for individual quarters (three month periods) and headline quarterly statistics will not be published.
• New house build data for 2020-21 will be collected and published on an annual basis only. Data will not be requested for individual quarters and headline quarterly statistics will not be published.
• The timetable and commissioning of some data collections will commence later than in previous years.  This is due to the Welsh Government and data providers catching up with postponed collections from 2020-21.

Note that these proposals relate to 2021-22 only and will be reviewed for future years.

A detailed timetable of data collections is outlined in the table below.

Note that data collections scheduled during the latter half of 2021-22 are currently under review. These collections may include a reduced data requirement but will not include any additional information to that requested in previous years.