General Register Office for S C O T L A N D information about Scotland's people Producing small area housing and household statistics from Council Tax systems Esther Roughsedge General Register Office for Scotland (GROS)

General Register Office for S C O T L A N D information about Scotland's people Outline Purpose Assessors’ Portal – statistics on dwellings Council Tax – statistics on households Advantages and disadvantages Replacement housing/household statistics

General Register Office for S C O T L A N D information about Scotland's people Background GROS publishes statistics on number of dwellings, households and vacant dwellings, for each council in Scotland. Mainly used by council Planners and other service providers. Strong demand for more detailed local information.

General Register Office for S C O T L A N D information about Scotland's people 1. Assessors’ Portal: statistics on dwellings

General Register Office for S C O T L A N D information about Scotland's people Assessors’ Portal Council tax is a property-based tax, to help pay for council services. The Scottish Assessors assess the Council Tax band of each property. They maintain a database of every property in Scotland (the ‘Assessors’ Portal’).

General Register Office for S C O T L A N D information about Scotland's people Data published by GROS GROS uses the postcode to aggregate the Assessors’ Portal data to neighbourhood level (data zones): –Total no. dwellings –No. dwellings in each Council Tax band –No. dwellings by number of rooms –No. dwellings by type of property (flat, terrace, detached house or semi-detached house) –Density of housing

General Register Office for S C O T L A N D information about Scotland's people Quality checks Before publishing, we carried out a number of quality checks, including comparing the overall data to the Census. The Assessors resolved any potential inconsistencies, such as use of the term ‘villa’. We identify any missing postcodes.

General Register Office for S C O T L A N D information about Scotland's people  Crown Copyright 2007

General Register Office for S C O T L A N D information about Scotland's people  Crown Copyright 2007

General Register Office for S C O T L A N D information about Scotland's people  Crown Copyright 2007

General Register Office for S C O T L A N D information about Scotland's people Advantages and disadvantages Advantages –Single administrative database – good quality, consistent data covering the whole of Scotland. –Easy to access. –Provides neighbourhood information which is not available from any other source except the Census. –Assessors are keen for the data to be used more widely. Disadvantages –Some missing information.

General Register Office for S C O T L A N D information about Scotland's people 2. Council Tax – statistics on occupied/vacant dwellings

General Register Office for S C O T L A N D information about Scotland's people Council Tax statistics Assessors’ Portal doesn’t record whether dwellings are occupied or not. But Council Tax systems do… For Council Tax purposes, councils record details of every dwelling, and any discounts/exemptions. There are discounts/exemptions for 2 nd homes and empty properties. Allows us to compile neighbourhood statistics on occupied and vacant dwellings.

General Register Office for S C O T L A N D information about Scotland's people Our approach Scottish Government already collected Council Tax information at council level, which we use to publish council household estimates. GROS set up a new, small area data collection.

General Register Office for S C O T L A N D information about Scotland's people What we did Amended legislation to allow councils to supply non-personal data obtained as part of their council tax billing activities. Discussed with councils and their software suppliers. Produced a data specification to describe what information we wanted (based on the Council Tax legislation).

General Register Office for S C O T L A N D information about Scotland's people What we did (cont.) There are 5 Council Tax software suppliers in Scotland. We went via the ‘lead’ council for each software supplier, and paid them to develop a new report, based on our data spec. Piloted the data collection last year.

General Register Office for S C O T L A N D information about Scotland's people Output Council Tax report produces figures at postcode level. Some councils didn’t want to supply us with data at postcode level. We provided them with an Access database which uses the postcode to aggregate the data to ‘data zone’ level.

General Register Office for S C O T L A N D information about Scotland's people Data specification Total dwellings. Exempt (unoccupied). Exempt (occupied) – mainly all-student households and barracks. Long-term empty properties. 2 nd homes. Dwellings occupied entirely by adults who are ‘disregarded’ for Council Tax purposes. Single occupancy discounts.

General Register Office for S C O T L A N D information about Scotland's people Issues Incomplete postcode information – we can’t geo-reference these dwellings. Some councils can’t separately identify 2 nd homes and vacant properties. Some confusion over the interpretation of Council Tax legislation, in terms of which dwellings are occupied or unoccupied.

General Register Office for S C O T L A N D information about Scotland's people Issues with individual software suppliers One software supplier uses a ‘Band X’. Some councils use different codes to classify occupied and unoccupied exemptions. These issues were only identified after piloting the data collection with a range of councils (not just one per software supplier).

General Register Office for S C O T L A N D information about Scotland's people Comparisons Council data collection. Number of dwellings recorded in Assessors’ Portal. Maps, e.g., location of second homes and all-student households. Some comparisons with Census data.

General Register Office for S C O T L A N D information about Scotland's people

General Register Office for S C O T L A N D information about Scotland's people  Crown Copyright 2007

General Register Office for S C O T L A N D information about Scotland's people  Crown Copyright 2007

General Register Office for S C O T L A N D information about Scotland's people  Crown Copyright 2007

General Register Office for S C O T L A N D information about Scotland's people Uses of Council Tax data Small area household estimates – useful for Planners and service providers. Will allow us to produce household projections for different geographies. Lots of interest in vacant properties and second homes.

General Register Office for S C O T L A N D information about Scotland's people 3. What next?

General Register Office for S C O T L A N D information about Scotland's people Future of Council Tax Scottish Government has a policy of replacing Council Tax with a Local Income Tax. We are investigating possible alternative sources of data.

General Register Office for S C O T L A N D information about Scotland's people (a) Housing data approach Find a source of data on all dwellings –e.g., Definitive National Address project Find a source of data on vacant dwellings / 2 nd homes –e.g., through tax system  Vacant dwellings and occupied dwellings (≈ households)

General Register Office for S C O T L A N D information about Scotland's people (b) Population data approach Find a source of data on all people, including address or Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN). Aggregate by address or UPRN. Provides household estimates, plus some info on household type (e.g., age and gender of members). A possible source is NHS Central Register.

General Register Office for S C O T L A N D information about Scotland's people Websites GROS estimates-projections/index.html Scottish Neighbourhood Statistics Scottish Assessors’ Portal

General Register Office for S C O T L A N D information about Scotland's people Any questions?