Reference metadata describe statistical concepts and methodologies used for the collection and generation of data. They provide information on data quality and, since they are strongly content-oriented, assist users in interpreting the data. Reference metadata, unlike structural metadata, can be decoupled from the data.
National Reference Metadata in Euro SDMX Metadata Structure (ESMS)
Compiling agency: Service des Données et des Etudes Statistiques (SDES) Commissariat général au développement durable Ministère de la Transition Ecologique et de la Cohésion des territoires
Service des Données et des Etudes Statistiques (SDES)
Commissariat général au développement durable
Ministère de la Transition Ecologique et de la Cohésion des territoires
1.2. Contact organisation unit
Bureau des Statistiques sur l'Offre de Logements et Locaux (BSOLL)
CGDD / SDES / SDSLC / BSOLL
1.3. Contact name
Restricted from publication
1.4. Contact person function
Restricted from publication
1.5. Contact mail address
Tour Sequoia Place Carpeaux 92055 LA DEFENSE CEDEX
1.6. Contact email address
Restricted from publication
1.7. Contact phone number
Restricted from publication
1.8. Contact fax number
Restricted from publication
2.1. Metadata last certified
22 August 2024
2.2. Metadata last posted
22 August 2024
2.3. Metadata last update
22 August 2024
3.1. Data description
Building permits (in French : "autorisations d'urbanisme", for instance "permis de construire") are administrative authorizations which are necessary for new buildings and significant pieces of work. Hence they provide advanced indicators of the building activity business cycle.
Are measured : numbers of new dwellings and square meters of useful floor area
Source : French administrative database Sitadel
3.2. Classification system
CPA or CC which are equivalent at the required level of detail
3.3. Coverage - sector
Activities covered : CPA 41.00.1 and 41.00.2
The source covers all French building permits (including "déclarations préalables"). Such permits are not required for constructions with a floor area of less than 5 square meters and a height of less than 12 meters.
3.4. Statistical concepts and definitions
In the administrative database used (called Sitadel), most of the information requested in building permit forms is available for each authorized construction project.
In particular, this includes the type of work (residential or non-residential), the number of dwellings for residential buildings, the useful floor area for all buildings.
In addition to these variables used for STS indicators, there are other variables such as the precise location of the building or the number of dwellings according to the number of rooms.
3.5. Statistical unit
The reporting units are mostly municipalities or groups of municipalities (around 2 800), the field is completed by local State administrations.
The observation units are building projects/permits which create one or more dwelling(s) or create square meters of useful floor area of non-residential buildings
3.6. Statistical population
Administrative data are collected in a register (called "Sitadel") for around 1 million building permits every year, around 200.000 of them contributing to the building permit indicators by creating new dwellings or useful floor area.
3.7. Reference area
France excluding Mayotte for residential buildings (data are collected for Mayotte but not used in estimations yet).
France including Mayotte for non-residential buildings, but only since 2012.
3.8. Coverage - Time
Monthly data, back to 1994 for Eurostat, even if 2000 is the usual starting date for disseminations in France. For the number of dwellings, one annual series is published in France. Actually, the database has usable data back to 1974, but their quality is not reliably assessed.
3.9. Base period
Not relevant
Either number of dwellings or square meters of useful floor area
For residential buildings : building permits actually granted during each calendar month.
For non-residential buildings : building permits recorded in the Sitadel database during each calendar month (the difference with residential buildings is that the statistics for one month include building permits which had been awarded in an earlier month but were recorded only this month).
6.1. Institutional Mandate - legal acts and other agreements
At European level, building permits indicators are part of the European Business Statistics (EBS) Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 on 27 November 2019, followed by the Commission Implementing Regulation 2020/1197, where they are mentioned in table 9. They are part of "principal European economic indicators" (PEEIs). The regulation requires quarterly or monthly data 3 months after the end of the period. In France, data are sent monthly to Eurostat, one month after the end of the period.
The data collection is regulated by the articles R423-75, R423-76 and R423-77 of the urban planning code, which mentions that all data included in the building permit requests are to be sent to the ministry for the Sitadel database for the purpose of statistics and several other purposes.
6.2. Institutional Mandate - data sharing
Data are sent to Eurostat monthly, they are not sent directly to any other international organizations.
7.1. Confidentiality - policy
The confidentiality policy is only related to the protection of personal data, which are not quantitative (address and name of the building permit applicant for instance). There are no statistical confidentiality measures for aggregated indicators.
Personal data of natural persons are protected by a regulatory text published in march 2021 (https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jorf/id/JORFTEXT000043279929). However, some of these personal data (address of the construction, identifier of the building permit) can be generally disseminated because they are considered by the national regulation as "necessary to the people's information".
7.2. Confidentiality - data treatment
There are no statistical confidentiality measures, only measures to ensure the protection of personal data.
8.1. Release calendar
The annual release calendar is published in advance.
At the end of the month following the reference period, at 8.45 AM on the release date, data are disseminated to the public and sent to Eurostat. An embargo policy is applied until then. However, those data are transmitted for information to officials of the Ministry at 6PM local time previous night, and to some specialized newspapers to prepare their articles at 8.15 AM on the release date.
Monthly both to Eurostat and nationally
10.1. Dissemination format - News release
There is a press release for the statistics about the number of dwellings, accompanying every publication. It's just a copy of the chapeau of the publication. There are no Government's comments in this press release. The Government is free to make its own comments besides, which sometimes happened.
10.2. Dissemination format - Publications
For both residential buildings and non-residential buildings, we release a monthly publication called Statinfo with a short analysis, graphs, tables and maps. This publication is completed by a lot of data files.
10.3. Dissemination format - online database
Monthly results until the municipality level are available online, with different statistical techniques and levels of detail depending on the local level (there is no statistical adjustment for municipalities, there are some at less detailed levels), via :
Personal data are not disseminated, except the address of the building place and the identifier of the building permit, which are considered as necessary to the public information by a national regulation (https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI000037798163/ 8°)
The IT system includes a lot of quality controls on each building permit to ensure the validation of the published data, missing data are tracked, etc. Around 25 persons in Full-Time Equivalent work on the quality of the database.
11.2. Quality management - assessment
The exhaustivity of building permits is the main quality of Sitadel, after a delay to manage to collect all of the data.
For residential buildings, statistical estimations "in real time" are provided for the missing information at the time of publication for the recent months.
For non-residential buildings, there are no such estimations "in real time" yet they should be published in 2025, then to get series relevant for business-cycle analysis, it's necessary to publish statistics "in recording time", which are correct in evolution if the rhythm of the data collection is regular.
The monthly frequency of the publication is very much appreciated by users.
12.1. Relevance - User Needs
Sitadel is used for :
- statistical analyses, on a short-term period on the national or regional ground, on a longer term on a more local ground;
- a sampling base or ancillary source for several other statistical operations ;
- a help to complement administrative information systems, especially tax information systems ;
- public policy analyses ;
The data are used by national administrations, local authorities, professional organisations and business companies, and researchers.
12.2. Relevance - User Satisfaction
The monthly publication reached scores of 3500 hits.
Regular contacts are held with institutionals (professional organizations and government).
12.3. Completeness
The data are nearly complete after a delay
13.1. Accuracy - overall
Data are meant to be nearly exhaustive after 24 months but nearly 90% of the information is known within 3 months.
13.2. Sampling error
No sampling
13.3. Non-sampling error
The first release for residential building permits (which is released in the end of the month following the reference month) is based on average on 72% of the dwellings. Non-respondents are estimated on the basis of the observation of the historical first month responding rate.
14.1. Timeliness
The indicators are released around the final day of the month following the end of the reference month.
The data collection occurs mainly on the first half of the month.
14.2. Punctuality
100% of releases delivered on time, except during the Covid-19 lockdown in France between march and may 2020.
15.1. Comparability - geographical
The same process is applied on the whole country. Geographical differences are due to local behaviours.
15.2. Comparability - over time
The same process of data collection is applied month after month.
A major improvement of the data collection system has occured between november 2011 and november 2012 : the local statistical units that gathered information at the regional level have been replaced by a single organization based on four sites, applying the same rules.
15.3. Coherence - cross domain
Not relevant.
15.4. Coherence - internal
Complete as statistics are computed on micro-data basis.
The cost consists in around 25 FTE persons all around the year, informaticians excluded.
The burden consists in one monthly extraction and transmission (15min max) for around 2 800 local authorities.
The burden is neglected for state administrations, as the operation is fully automatized or included in another processus (assessing legality of the construction project).
17.1. Data revision - policy
For non-residential buildings, there is no revision as data are aggregated only one the basis of the recording month.
For residential buildings, each month, the whole dataset is recalculated. The same revisions are applied nationally and in transmissions to Eurostat.
Revisions come from evolution of the delay for collecting data : if data are collected later than usually, statistics are revised higher, and vice versa.
17.2. Data revision - practice
For residential buildings (the only ones which are revised) :
- the mean-absolute revision (MAR) of the year-on-year growth rate since beginning of 2019 for the last month published is 3,5 %.
- the mean revision (MR) of the year-on-year growth rate of the last month published is +0,3 %.
Revisions would be much lower if the publication was released one or even two months later, which would still allow the compliance with the European regulation.
18.1. Source data
Type of source : Monthly production of statistics from an administrative source.
Exhaustive source.
18.2. Frequency of data collection
Monthly
18.3. Data collection
Questionnaires used in the survey : building permit forms.
Data collection media : mostly electronic files sent by local authorities or state administrations
18.4. Data validation
Data validation occurs on different levels, starting from the data collection from the local authorities to the national level.
18.5. Data compilation
An estimate for the missing information is computed for residential buildings, which is added to the level of collected information.
The data provided to Eurostat are available as absolute figures, namely as the number of dwellings and the square meters. The data sent to Eurostat are to be calendar and seasonally adjusted with annual revision of coefficients of seasonal adjustment (in February).
none
Building permits (in French : "autorisations d'urbanisme", for instance "permis de construire") are administrative authorizations which are necessary for new buildings and significant pieces of work. Hence they provide advanced indicators of the building activity business cycle.
Are measured : numbers of new dwellings and square meters of useful floor area
Source : French administrative database Sitadel
22 August 2024
In the administrative database used (called Sitadel), most of the information requested in building permit forms is available for each authorized construction project.
In particular, this includes the type of work (residential or non-residential), the number of dwellings for residential buildings, the useful floor area for all buildings.
In addition to these variables used for STS indicators, there are other variables such as the precise location of the building or the number of dwellings according to the number of rooms.
The reporting units are mostly municipalities or groups of municipalities (around 2 800), the field is completed by local State administrations.
The observation units are building projects/permits which create one or more dwelling(s) or create square meters of useful floor area of non-residential buildings
Administrative data are collected in a register (called "Sitadel") for around 1 million building permits every year, around 200.000 of them contributing to the building permit indicators by creating new dwellings or useful floor area.
France excluding Mayotte for residential buildings (data are collected for Mayotte but not used in estimations yet).
France including Mayotte for non-residential buildings, but only since 2012.
For residential buildings : building permits actually granted during each calendar month.
For non-residential buildings : building permits recorded in the Sitadel database during each calendar month (the difference with residential buildings is that the statistics for one month include building permits which had been awarded in an earlier month but were recorded only this month).
Data are meant to be nearly exhaustive after 24 months but nearly 90% of the information is known within 3 months.
Either number of dwellings or square meters of useful floor area
An estimate for the missing information is computed for residential buildings, which is added to the level of collected information.
Type of source : Monthly production of statistics from an administrative source.
Exhaustive source.
Monthly both to Eurostat and nationally
The indicators are released around the final day of the month following the end of the reference month.
The data collection occurs mainly on the first half of the month.
The same process is applied on the whole country. Geographical differences are due to local behaviours.
The same process of data collection is applied month after month.
A major improvement of the data collection system has occured between november 2011 and november 2012 : the local statistical units that gathered information at the regional level have been replaced by a single organization based on four sites, applying the same rules.
