The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) is seeking views on a new methodology for the department’s land use statistics for England.
The statistics describe how England’s land is used – including how much is residential, agricultural, woodland and transport – and how that is changing over time, including how much new residential development takes place on different land types.
The statistics are currently published up to 2022 and are built on data that Ordnance Survey (OS) is retiring. The data’s replacement, the National Geographic Database (NGD), is a more detailed picture of England’s land, but it is fundamentally different from the old data, and the statistics cannot be produced from it using the existing method.
The methodology is being rebuilt and statistics modernised, rather than replicating the old approach on new data.
The refresh also responds to growing demand for land use evidence, including the recently published Land Use Framework for England, government housebuilding ambitions and the rollout of clean energy infrastructure.
This consultation seeks views on our proposals to rebuild the land use statistics on the new data, focusing on the choices most likely to matter to users, including a new, more detailed set of land use categories.
This document invites comments on MHCLG proposals for the future production of its land use statistics in three related releases: Land Use in England, Land use change: new residential addresses, and Land use change: hectarage.
The consultation is open now and will run until 28th October.
