Press release: June 2018 Price Paid Data

This month’s Price Paid Data includes details of more than 85,000 sales of land and property in England and Wales that HM Land Registry received for registration in June 2018.

In the dataset you can find the date of sale for each property, its full address and sale price, its category (residential or commercial) and type (detached, semi-detached, terraced, flat or maisonette and other), whether it is new build or not and whether it is freehold or leasehold.

The number of sales received for registration by property type and month

Property type June 2018 May 2018 April 2018
Detached 18,518 18,060 16,728
Semi-detached 22,251 20,897 19,362
Terraced 23,243 22,363 20,714
Flat/maisonette 15,678 15,846 15,457
Other 5,803 6,263 6,147
Total 85,493 83,429 78,408

Of the 85,493 sales received for registration in June 2018:

  • 64,262 were freehold, a 5% fall on June 2017

  • 8,735 were newly built, an 8.9% fall on June 2017

There is a time difference between the sale of a property and its registration at HM Land Registry.

Of the 85,493 sales received for registration, 22,281 took place in June 2018 of which:

  • 387 were of residential properties in England and Wales for £1 million and over

  • 230 were of residential properties in Greater London for £1 million and over

  • one was a residential property in Birmingham for more than £1 million

  • one was a residential property in Greater Manchester for more than £1 million

  • one was a residential property in Cardiff for more than £1 million

The most expensive residential sale taking place in June 2018 was of a detached property in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London for £28,500,000. The cheapest residential sale in June 2018 was a terraced property in County Durham for £17,250.

The most expensive commercial sale taking place in June 2018 was in the City of London for £71,200,000. The cheapest commercial sales in June 2018 were in Waltham Forest, London and the Isle of Wight for £100.

Access the full dataset

Notes to editors

  1. Price Paid Data is published at 11am on the 20th working day of each month. The next dataset will be published on Tuesday 28 August 2018.

  2. Price Paid Data is property price data for all residential and commercial property sales in England and Wales that are lodged with HM Land Registry for registration in that month, subject to exclusions.

  3. The amount of time between the sale of a property and the registration of this information with HM Land Registry varies. It typically ranges between two weeks and two months. Data for the two most recent months is therefore incomplete and does not give an indication of final monthly volumes. Occasionally the interval between sale and registration is longer than two months. The small number of sales affected cannot be updated for publication until the sales are lodged for registration.

  4. Price Paid Data categories are either Category A (Standard entries), which includes single residential properties sold for full market value, or Category B (Additional entries), such as sales to a company, buy-to-lets where they can be identified by a mortgage and repossessions.

  5. HM Land Registry has been collecting information on Category A sales from January 1995 and on Category B sales from October 2013.

  6. Price Paid Data can be downloaded in text, CSV format and in a machine readable format as linked data and is released under Open Government Licence (OGL). Under the OGL, HM Land Registry permits the use of Price Paid Data for commercial or non-commercial purposes. However, the OGL does not cover the use of third party rights, which HM Land Registry is not authorised to license.

  7. The Price Paid Data report builder allows users to build bespoke reports using the data. Reports can be based on location, estate type, price paid or property type over a defined period of time.

  8. HM Land Registry’s mission is to guarantee and protect property rights in England and Wales.

  9. HM Land Registry is a government department created in 1862. It operates as an executive agency and a trading fund and its running costs are covered by the fees paid by the users of its services. Its ambition is to become the world’s leading land registry for speed, simplicity and an open approach to data.

  10. HM Land Registry safeguards land and property ownership worth in excess of £4 trillion, including around £1 trillion of mortgages. The Land Register contains more than 25 million titles showing evidence of ownership for some 85% of the land mass of England and Wales.

  11. For further information about HM Land Registry visit www.gov.uk/land-registry.

  12. Follow us on Twitter @HMLandRegistry our blog, LinkedIn and Facebook.




Press release: Justice Secretary outlines future vision for probation

  • Government is strengthening offender supervision in existing CRC contracts and investing an extra £22 million each year to improve through-the-gate support
  • CRC and NPS areas to be aligned – improving joint working and strengthening ties with key partners, including the third sector, local authorities and PCCs
  • Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC) contracts will end two years early in 2020, with plans to work with the market to design new and improved contracts.

A consultation document published today outlines the Ministry of Justice’s intention to strengthen the supervision of offenders and increase confidence in community sentences.

It builds on the recent publication of our female offender and employment and education strategies, to demonstrate the department’s commitment to tackling reoffending by: investing in community provision; strengthening alternatives to short custodial sentences; and boosting rehabilitation and prospects for offenders.

Probation relies heavily on joint working with a range of agencies and today’s consultation outlines plans to create a more integrated and collaborative system, by improving partnerships with PCCs and the third sector.

In the future, CRC and NPS areas will be aligned, with ten new probation regions in England, simplifying and strengthening ties with key local partners and creating opportunities to co-commission rehabilitation services with PCCs.

Reforms to probation in 2015, known as ‘Transforming Rehabilitation’, were challenging, ambitious and have led to 40,000 extra offenders a year receiving support and supervision on release – a positive change for public safety.

This additional monitoring has been carried out by newly formed, ‘Community Rehabilitation Companies’ (CRCs) who manage low and medium-risk offenders, and the publicly funded National Probation Service (NPS), who manage higher-risk offenders.

While CRCs have reduced the overall number of people reoffending, it is clear that probation providers have faced significant challenges. Unforeseen changes in the types of offenders coming to the courts and the sentences they receive have substantially reduced CRC income and affected the quality of frontline services.

That is why the consultation document sets out urgent action being taken to address existing issues with CRC contracts. This includes ending current CRC contracts early in 2020, improving supervision and through-the-gate support in the meantime, and using the lessons learnt so far to put in place improved services in the future, with more effective commercial arrangements.

Secretary of State, David Gauke said:

I am determined to have a probation service that protects the public, commands the confidence of the courts and ultimately reduces reoffending.

So we are taking decisive action now to improve the delivery of probation services in England and Wales.

We want to see less reliance on ineffective short prison terms, and in order to achieve this courts must have confidence that probation services will deliver tough community sentences – sentences that punish, but also help those who commit crime to turn their lives around and stop offending.

I am confident that the proposals set out in this consultation will play a major role in helping us to achieve this aim.

To improve services in the next two years, the Ministry of Justice is investing an additional £22 million a year in through-the-gate support for offenders when they leave prison, as part of wider changes to contracts to stabilise CRC delivery until the end of 2020 and allow CRCs to continue to deliver the level of service required.

The Ministry of Justice will also work with London and Greater Manchester to co-design future services in those areas as part of existing devolution arrangements.

In addition, the devolved responsibilities of the Welsh Government and existing arrangements in Wales make the delivery of probation services fundamentally different to England.

To reflect this, the consultation sets out proposals to bring the supervision of all offenders in Wales into the NPS and explore how wider partners can help to improve rehabilitative support for offenders, by better joining up with health, housing and other local services.

Alongside the structural and contractual changes, a new professional register will be introduced, helping staff to move between roles and develop their careers. The consultation also seeks views on improving the training and development of staff.

The consultation will seek to gather views and expertise from a range of potential providers, including the voluntary sector, as well as other stakeholders, and will inform the future delivery of probation services in England and Wales.




News story: Lowestoft and Yarmouth Ports can be the catalyst for local regeneration

Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft ports should be ready to handle more goods than ever before after Brexit, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury said as she visited Great Yarmouth port today (27 July 2018).

The East of England is already a major generator and supplier of energy and the region is at the centre of the world’s largest market for offshore wind energy. Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft combine to create England’s largest group of high-tech energy exports.

And the Chief Secretary now wants to see the ports become vital trading hubs, increasing trade with global partners.

Latest figures show that during 2017 the East of England exported nearly £29 billion worth of goods, up by £2.5 billion from 2016 figures.

Machinery and transport goods were worth more than £10 billion alone, while agricultural and food goods were worth nearly £2 billion.

Latest figures also show that during 2018 more than £3 million worth of goods have been traded from the two ports with Asia, North America and non-EU European nations, a figure that Liz Truss thinks can go higher.

Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Liz Truss said:

Yarmouth and Lowestoft ports have the potential be the lifeblood of the local economy, and I have seen today the enormous ambition that business leaders have to improve trade links form these areas.

After we leave the EU, we hope that these great ports will be able to take advantage of the opportunities available to them and realise their exports ambitions.

Exporting is good for business, good for jobs and good for people working and living in the area.

Employment in the region at a record high of 78.7 per cent. And since 2010, job growth in the East of England has been the second fastest of all UK regions.

The government is also improving transport links in the region, vital for port access, by investing more than £3 billion on major road schemes in the East of England, including the £6.8 million Great Yarmouth link road which has eased congestion and helped to support offshore access.




News story: London seminar: What would it take to end homelessness? (11 Sept, 2018)




News story: Plastic bag sales in ‘big seven’ supermarkets down 86% since 5p charge

Plastic bag sales in England’s ‘big seven’ supermarkets have dropped by 86% since the Government introduced its 5p plastic bag charge in 2015, helping to tackle the devastating impact of plastic waste on our environment.

New figures reveal customers of the country’s biggest supermarkets bought nearly a quarter fewer plastic bags last year compared to 2016/17 – a decrease of nearly 300 million bags.

This is equivalent to just 19 bags per person in England, compared to 140 bags since the government introduced a 5p charge in 2015 – a dramatic reduction of 86%.

Welcoming today’s figures, Environment Secretary Michael Gove said:

These figures demonstrate the collective impact we can make to help the environment by making simple changes to our daily routines. We want businesses to continue to look at what they can do to help improve our environment to leave it in a better state than we found it.

It is only by working together we will reverse the rising tide of plastic waste finding its way into our rivers, seas and oceans and the catastrophic impact this is having on our marine environment.

Plastic bags have a significant impact on the environment. Government scientists believe plastic in the sea is set to treble in a decade unless marine litter is curbed – with one million birds and over 100,000 sea mammals dying every year from eating and getting tangled in plastic waste.

A recent study by Cefas revealed since the 5p charge on plastic bags was introduced, which has taken over 9 billion plastic bags out of circulation, there has been an estimated 50% reduction in plastic bag marine litter.

Thomas Maes, Marine Litter Scientist at Cefas said:

Every plastic bag not purchased is one which will not end up in our sea, damaging habitats or harming marine life. Since efforts from across Europe came into effect, including the UK’s 5p charge, we have observed a sharp decline in the percentage of plastic bags captured by fishing nets on our trawl surveys of the seafloor around the UK as compared to 2010.

It is encouraging to see the efforts to reduce plastic bag usage by all of society, whether the public, industry, NGOs or government. These figures show that by working together we can tackle the marine litter problem by reducing, reusing and recycling.

The UK continues to be a global leader in protecting our seas, oceans and marine life. The Government has recently announced a range of measures to eliminate all avoidable plastic waste including a world-leading ban on microbeads and proposals to extend the 5p plastic bag charge and explore plastic free aisles in supermarkets.

Earlier this year we announced our intention to ban the sale of plastic straws, stirrers and cotton buds, plans for a deposit return scheme to increase recycling rates of drinks bottles and cans, and launched a call for evidence on using the tax system or charges to address single-use plastic waste.

Today’s figures also reveal that for 2017/18 5p plastic bag sales contributed nearly £60m toward charities and other good causes.

  1. The seven biggest retailers in the UK are Asda, Marks and Spencer, Morrisons, Sainsbury, The Co-operative Group, Tesco and Waitrose.
  2. The figure that plastic in the sea is set to treble is taken from the Future of the Sea report.
  3. The statistic that there has been an estimated 50% reduction in plastic bag marine litter since the 5p plastic bag charge was introduced in 2015 is from Cefas’s Below the Surface report.