Estimates of Leasehold Dwellings in England

Martin Boyd writes to the UK Statistics Authority on leasehold statistics

Another set of statistics has been published by EHS about the leasehold sector and again they assert ONS has validated their methodology. We have again criticised the data as containing a number of basic errors.

https://www.leaseholdknowledge.com/lies-damned-lies-and-statistics

I can accept that the basic statistical methodology might be valid but there are misunderstandings by EHS about the interpretation of key elements in that data. We have tried to raise these problems with the EHS team on three occasions but they keep making the same mistake.

We last published our numbers in February 2014 before helping the government produce their first set of data in August 2014.

I will be updating our data in early December and have told the Department the final number is likely to be 6.68 million. Very clearly one of has got things wrong. I have explained to the Department of a couple of differences in what is being measured but these do not account for the huge difference in the final numbers.

We would suggest that any work in this field which uses the EHS survey method which relies on someone validating if they do or do not live in a leasehold home is inherently prone to error as may be the descriptors taken from the Land Registry for homes which may not have been sold in a number of years..

I would like to understand what we need to do to have ONS review their validation of the EHS methodology.

Martin Boyd