England

In England the November data shows, on average, house prices have risen by 0.3% since October 2019. The annual price rise of 1.7% takes the average property value to £251,222.

The regional data for England indicates that:

• the West Midlands experienced the greatest monthly price rise, up by 1.7%
• Yorkshire and The Humber saw the most significant monthly price fall, down by 1%
• the West Midlands experienced the greatest annual price rise, up by 4%
• East of England saw the largest annual price fall, down by 0.7%

Price change by region for England

Repossession sales by volume for England

The lowest number of repossession sales in September 2019 was in the East of England.

The highest number of repossession sales in September 2019 was in the North West.

Average price by property type for England

Funding and buyer status for England

Building status for England

*Figures for the 2 most recent months are not being published because there are not enough new build transactions to give a meaningful result.

London

London shows, on average, house prices have fallen by 0.5% since October 2019. An annual price rise of 0.2% takes the average property value to £475,458.

Average price by property type for London

Funding and buyer status for London

Building status for London

*Figures for the 2 most recent months are not being published because there are not enough new build transactions to give a meaningful result.

Wales

Wales shows, on average, house prices have risen by 3.5% since October 2019. An annual price rise of 7.8% takes the average property value to £172,574.

There were 45 repossession sales for Wales in September 2019.

Average price by property type for Wales

Funding and buyer status for Wales

Building status for Wales

*Figures for the 2 most recent months are not being published because there are not enough new build transactions to give a meaningful result.

Access the full UK HPI

UK house prices

UK house prices increased by 2.2% in the year to November 2019, up from 1.3% in October 2019.

The UK Property Transaction Statistics for November 2019 showed that on a seasonally adjusted basis, the number of transactions on residential properties with a value of £40,000 or greater was 102,050. This is 1.9% higher than a year ago. Between October 2019 and November 2019, transactions increased by 3.2%.

House price growth was strongest in Wales where prices increased by 7.8% over the year. Wales has experienced record annual growth in November 2019. This is driven by a shift towards higher value property being transacted between October and November in areas with a typically larger volume of transactions, such as Cardiff and Newport, coupled with a fall in prices during the same period in 2018. The lowest annual growth was in East of England, where prices fell by 0.7% over the year to November 2019, followed by London where prices increased by 0.2% over the year.

See the economic statement.

Background

1. The UK House Price Index (HPI) is published on the second or third Wednesday of each month with Northern Ireland figures updated quarterly. The December 2019 UK HPI will be published at 9.30am on Wednesday 19 February 2020, with the 2019 UK HPI Annual report following on Monday 24 February 2020. See calendar of release dates.

2. We have made some changes to improve the accuracy of the UK HPI. We are not publishing average price and percentage change for new builds and existing resold property as done previously because there are not currently enough new build transactions to provide a reliable result. This means that in this month’s UK HPI reports, new builds and existing resold property are reported in line with the sales volumes currently available.

3. The UK HPI revision period has been extended to 13 months, following a review of the revision policy (see calculating the UK HPI section 4.4). This ensures the data used is more comprehensive.

4. Sales volume data is also available by property status (new build and existing property) and funding status (cash and mortgage) in our downloadable data tables. Transactions involving the creation of a new register, such as new builds, are more complex and require more time to process. Read revisions to the UK HPI data.

5. Revision tables have been introduced for England and Wales within the downloadable data. Tables will be available in csv format. See about the UK HPI for more information.

6. Data for the UK HPI is provided by HM Land Registry, Registers of Scotland, Land & Property Services/Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency and the Valuation Office Agency.

7. The UK HPI is calculated by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and Land & Property Services/Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. It applies a hedonic regression model that uses the various sources of data on property price, in particular HM Land Registry’s Price Paid Dataset, and attributes to produce estimates of the change in house prices each month. Find out more about the methodology used from the ONS and Northern Ireland Statistics & Research Agency.

8. The UK Property Transaction statistics are taken from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) monthly estimates of the number of residential and non-residential property transactions in the UK and its constituent countries. The number of property transactions in the UK is highly seasonal, with more activity in the summer months and less in the winter. This regular annual pattern can sometimes mask the underlying movements and trends in the data series so HMRC also presents the UK aggregate transaction figures on a seasonally adjusted basis. Adjustments are made for both the time of year and the construction of the calendar, including corrections for the position of Easter and the number of trading days in a particular month.

9. UK HPI seasonally adjusted series are calculated at regional and national levels only. See data tables.

10. The first estimate for new build average price (April 2016 report) was based on a small sample which can cause volatility. A three-month moving average has been applied to the latest estimate to remove some of this volatility.

11. Work has been taking place since 2014 to develop a single, official HPI that reflects the final transaction price for sales of residential property in the UK. Using the geometric mean, it covers purchases at market value for owner-occupation and buy-to-let, excluding those purchases not at market value (such as re-mortgages), where the ‘price’ represents a valuation.

12. Information on residential property transactions for England and Wales, collected as part of the official registration process, is provided by HM Land Registry for properties that are sold for full market value.

13. The HM Land Registry dataset contains the sale price of the property, the date when the sale was completed, full address details, the type of property (detached, semi-detached, terraced or flat), if it is a newly built property or an established residential building and a variable to indicate if the property has been purchased as a financed transaction (using a mortgage) or as a non-financed transaction (cash purchase).

14. Repossession sales data is based on the number of transactions lodged with HM Land Registry by lenders exercising their power of sale.

15. For England, this is shown as volumes of repossession sales recorded by Government Office Region. For Wales, there is a headline figure for the number of repossession sales recorded in Wales.

16. The data can be downloaded as a .csv file. Repossession sales data prior to April 2016 is not available. Find out more information about repossession sales.

17. Background tables of the raw and cleansed aggregated data, in Excel and CSV formats, are also published monthly although Northern Ireland is on a quarterly basis. They are available for free use and re-use under the Open Government Licence.

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

19. 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.

20. HM Land Registry safeguards land and property ownership worth in excess of £7 trillion, including over £1 trillion of mortgages. The Land Register contains more than 25 million titles showing evidence of ownership for some 87% of the land mass of England and Wales.

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

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Claire O’Neill, UK President of the 2020 UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), leads the delegation, and will speak at Raisina. She is expected to set out the UK’s vision for a successful year of climate action, highlight the crucial role that India is playing and discuss the importance of working together in partnership on these shared challenges.

She is accompanied in India by senior officials working on climate change in the British Government, including Catherine Bremner, Director of International Climate and Energy at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. Ms Bremner will speak at Raisina about the e-mobility revolution, including the ‘Road to Zero Strategy’, which sets out the UK’s ambition for at least 50% of new car sales to be ultra-low emission by 2030.

Sir Dominic Asquith, High Commissioner to India, said:

The UK is here in force at Raisina this week. The strong climate focus of our delegation shows how important this agenda is to the UK. This is Claire O’Neill’s first overseas visit in her role as COP President – that speaks volumes about how crucial UK-India collaboration will be over the next year and beyond.

It’s not just climate. The range of expertise within this delegation – from environment and finance to defence and development – demonstrates the breadth of opportunities for UK-India collaboration. We are natural partners, with common interests in addressing common challenges. I’m confident we’ll hear this repeated from experts on both sides this week.

The official UK delegation at Raisina 2020 includes:

• Admiral Tony Radakin CB ADC, First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff. He will be discussing the Indo-Pacific with counterparts from India, Japan, Australia and France.

• Gareth Bayley, Prime Minister’s Special Representative on Afghanistan and Pakistan and Director of South Asia and Afghanistan at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). He will participate in a panel on counterterrorism with India’s Chief of Defence Staff.

• Joanna Roper, FCO’s Special Envoy for Gender Equality. She will discuss how women leaders are scripting stories of change and affecting political outcomes around the world.

• Rachel Glennerster, Chief Economist, Department for International Development. She will explore how communities and civil society can mobilise to reclaim control over the development debate.

• Veda Poon, Director International Finance, Her Majesty’s Treasury. She will discuss the international economy and multilateralism in a panel on trade, together with India’s Minister of Commerce and Industry.

Other senior attendees from the UK at Raisina include: Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland; Rafaello Pantucci, Director International Security Studies, Royal United Services institute for Defence and Security Studies, and; Robin Niblett CMG, Director, Chatham House.

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A warm welcome to His Excellency, Premier Stephen Marshall of South Australia, Her Excellency, High Commissioner Jo Tyndall of New Zealand, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.

Firstly, let me say how great it is to see you all here in Singapore. And to this Track 1.5 Wilton Park conference on Outer Space.

Wilton Park is an executive agency of the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office and delivers conferences from its base in Sussex, England. They have been organising conferences on space for many years that have focused on technical and regulatory solutions for operating in space.

At our Wilton Park event in April last year, we looked at how our conduct of space activities affects other operators and the space environment. There were representatives from Brazil, India, Russia and Turkey in addition to those who had attended before and we learned a lot from listening to multiple views.

This is the first time we have taken these Wilton Park space discussions outside the UK and to this new audience. So thank you for being here.

I am most grateful to the support shown by our Australian and New Zealand colleagues and to Secure World Foundation, an independent think tank.
We have ten ASEAN nations represented in this room plus other Asian nations including China, India, Japan, Pakistan and the Republic of Korea and of course our friends from the United States. We hope that this is the start of a new conversation on space and that there will be more events like this one.

We want this conversation to be inclusive. We want it to be frank and free and to recognise that the space environment is changing rapidly. And that means that the international community needs to respond and develop its thinking.

This past year saw:

• A test of a cutting-edge system of a harpoon and a net used in space to capture debris for the first time. They were deployed by the UK with the European Space Agency.

• The first life extension satellite launched by a US company bringing in to use this novel technology.

• The first landing on the dark side of the moon, by China.

• Starlink and OneWeb mega constellation satellites start to be launched in to space. These cause us to take a second look at space traffic management.

These developments reflect the fact that outer space matters because our economy and security depend on the safe, secure and sustainable use of Outer Space.

We rely on space for position, navigation and timing signals for our economy such as for banking data and to allow our militaries to operate.

We broadcast television from space. We send civil and military satellite communications through space. And we use earth observation data from satellites to improve agriculture and fight climate change.

Each of our nations aspire to grow and increase the wealth of its citizens. To do so, we all need safe and secure-access to systems in space. It’s in all of our interests to find ways to reduce the threats to our space systems. And it’s therefore vital that we develop a common understanding of the threats to space operations and a common lexicon for talking about it.

Some of this is about dealing with the unique nature of space. This is an environment that presents far more challenges than those we find on earth.

Collisions can happen on land or sea as they can and do in space. But collisions in space – or conjunctions, as they are known – can have more far reaching consequences than their terrestrial equivalents.

Conjunctions, intentional or not, create debris. That debris presents a threat whether it is a lifeless rocket body, a speck of paint or a dead satellite. We therefore need to do all we can to reduce the risk of such incidents.

Some of the threat is also down to the fact that new technologies have been developed that can damage or disrupt our space-based infrastructure. Some of these capabilities, such as anti-satellite missiles, are clearly military in nature. Others, such as powerful lasers, could have both military and civilian uses. So how should we ensure that we avoid misunderstandings in this new domain?

The current international legal regime, including the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, was drawn up in a different technological era. It did not foresee many of the developments that are now a reality. That is not a reason to reopen the Treaty. But nor should that stop us from working together to agree practical measures that would help make the space environment safer and more secure.

We have seen good progress in Vienna, at the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, or COPUOS. In June, COPUOS agreed 21 guidelines for the Long Term Sustainability of Space.

The UN General Assembly adopted the Guidelines by consensus in November. These set minimum standards and good practice for space operators. They demonstrate that the international community can agree better ways of working together with goodwill from all sides.

This should provide inspiration for discussions on the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS) under the UN Disarmament Committee in New York and the Conference of Disarmament in Geneva. With a more open and inclusive conversation, we hope that these discussions in Singapore will help inform those bodies. And we hope that we will find new ways to support the peaceful uses of space while recognising that this is an environment that is increasingly congested – and one in which new technologies are constantly coming online.

Today, the sessions will look at some of the practical problems of operating in space. And tomorrow you will be invited to suggest possible solutions.

This gives you all a real opportunity to explore practical measures for better communication between nations: directly, in normal times and at times of stress; to express our intent before we act; and to look at how behaviours are themselves a form of communication.

I know you will also look at how these ideas could be taken forward with other nations after the conference. And our intention is to work with partners to repeat this conference with other regional groups.

This conference is designed to enable a different, more open style of discussion, away from formal statements and to try to build a better understanding of what you are all thinking. So please do make the most of this setting to learn, engage with us and challenge our assumptions.

I wish you all the very best of luck.

Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Matt Hancock, will today introduce the NHS Long Term Plan Funding Bill to Parliament. The bill will enshrine in law an extra £33.9 billion every year by 2024 for the NHS to transform care.

The bill will include a ‘double-lock’ commitment that places a legal duty on both the Secretary of State and the Treasury to uphold this minimum level of NHS revenue funding over the next 4 years.

The bill will not seek to limit the NHS in deciding how funding is spent and where – a decision that is made by local clinicians for their local populations.

It will be one of the first pieces of domestic legislation to go through Parliament since this government took office, placing the NHS top of the domestic agenda.

The bill will place a legal duty on the government to guarantee a minimum level of spending every year, rising to £148.5 billion by 2024.

In the first stage of this annual funding increase, the government has already provided an extra £6.2 billion since April 2019, following the launch of the Long Term Plan in January 2019.

The bill provides safeguards that mean the Treasury will be required to ensure the annual supply estimates for the department’s NHS budget cannot be reduced, creating a legal exception that protects frontline NHS funding for the first time.

This comes on top of recent pledges:

• to build 40 new hospitals up and down the country, backed by £2.8 billion
• an extra £1.8 billion for capital spending, including £850 million for 20 hospital upgrades and urgent infrastructure projects
• £450 million for new scanners and the latest in AI technology

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: 

I have heard loud and clear that the priority of the British people is the NHS. 

Guaranteeing frontline services the biggest cash boost in history is another huge step towards making sure this treasured institution has everything it needs to deliver world-class care. 

There can be no doubting our commitment to the NHS. Putting our record funding commitment into law shows that we will stop at nothing to deliver on the people’s priorities.

Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock said:

During the election campaign, we committed to boosting funding for our NHS over the course of the Parliament and ensuring these new resources get to the frontline so that patients receive the care they need. 

Today we are making good on that manifesto commitment by introducing the NHS Funding Bill, demonstrating this government’s ironclad commitment to the NHS.  

With this unprecedented bill, we will enshrine in law the largest cash settlement in NHS history – bringing the total annual budget to almost £150 billion within 5 years. 

This funding bill will empower the NHS and its world-class clinicians to deliver our bold plan for the NHS. They can do so safe in the knowledge this government is giving them the financial certainty and support to revolutionise prevention, detection, and treatment of thousands of patients over the coming decade.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sajid Javid, said:

We are delivering on our promise to focus on the people’s priorities, with the NHS at the forefront. By enshrining the largest ever cash increase for the NHS in law, we will deliver a world-class health service that makes life in this country even better for people.

The Commission has opened a statutory inquiry to examine concerns about the way the Professional Footballers’ Association Charity PFAC (charity number 1150458) is managed. A statutory inquiry is the Commission’s most serious intervention.

The PFAC’s purpose is to advance the health and education of its beneficiaries as well as support them during periods of hardship.

In November 2018, the Commission opened a regulatory compliance case to explore concerns raised about the charity’s relationship with the Professional Footballers’ Association trade union and their management of conflicts of interest.

During the past year, the Commission met with the trustees as well as other parties. The Commission obtained and assessed information from the charity, union and others. Despite extensive engagement, the Commission continues to have serious concerns which have led to the opening of this inquiry. The inquiry has made no findings to date.

The inquiry will examine:

• the charity’s relationship and transactions with other bodies and whether they are in the best interests of the charity

• whether the charity’s activities have been exclusively charitable and for the public benefit

• the administration, governance and management of the charity by the trustees, examining how conflicts of interest have been dealt with and managed, and whether there has been any unauthorised trustee benefit

• whether or not the trustees have complied with and fulfilled their duties and responsibilities under charity law

The Commission may extend the scope of the inquiry if additional regulatory issues emerge.

Stephen Grenfell, Head of Investigations, Monitoring and Enforcement at the Charity Commission, said:

The public rightly expect charities to operate to the highest standards – across all they do. Serious concerns have been raised about the way the Professional Footballers’ Association charity is run. We will now examine what has happened at the charity through a full statutory inquiry and ensure, where necessary, action is taken.

It is the Commission’s policy, after it has concluded an inquiry, to publish a report detailing what issues the inquiry looked at, what actions were undertaken as part of the inquiry and what the outcomes were.

Reports of previous inquiries by the Commission are available on GOV.UK.

Ends.