FOI Ref: FOI/2021/3282
You asked
In the house price index data that you publish you provide 'Table 15 Housing market: simple average house prices, mortgage advances and incomes of borrowers, by new/other dwellings, type of buyer and region, United Kingdom, from 1992 (quarterly) 1,2 (previously DCLG table 514)'.
This table shows a breakdown of simple average prices and reported household income.
This table provides this data for countries and regions.
Is this information available on a more local basis? For example by LTLA?
The ultimate goal here to have the average former occupier house price and income and first time buyer occupier house price and income for each local authority.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
We believe the dataset you are referring to is the Quarterly house price data based on a sub-sample of the Regulated Mortgage Survey. Due to the relatively small sample size which we use, the data are not available at a further geographic breakdown than the country and regional level due to disclosure issues, as well as the impact on the quality of the data at a lower level. Section 39 of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 (SRSA) renders it an offence to disclose information held by the Statistics Board for statistical purposes that would identify an individual or a body corporate. As we are prohibited by law from publishing statistics in which individual businesses or persons can be identified, we find that Section 44 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) applies. Section 44 is an absolute exemption and no consideration of the public interest test needs to be applied.
Some house price data at a local authority level are available within our UK House Price Index monthly release (detailing monthly house price inflation across the UK):
UK House Price Index: reports - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
However, we do not hold analysis of income data reported within the tables at a lower level than what is already published.
We obtain the data used to compile the House Price data: Quarterly Tables from colleagues at UK Finance. They may be able to assist further in relation to the household income element (although please note that it is likely that any data they are able to provide you with would incur a charge).
If you would like any further information, please do not hesitate to contact us directly via our inbox: hpi@ons.gov.uk.