Federal Statistical Office (destatis)

E 21 "Business indices, seasonal adjustment"

Statistisches Bundesamt
Gustav-Stresemann-Ring 11
65180 Wiesbaden, Germany

Building permits are the granting of permission by the competent local authority to carry out a building project in which a living area or other useful area is created or altered.

German adaption of the Classification of types of construction (CC).

This indicator is compiled for building construction only. The activities covered are residential and non-residential building construction. There are no size classes covered.

A building permit is granted in the form of a certificate notifying that a building project complies with legal regulations. A building permit can also be a building permit that is provisional or subject to conditions or even partial. Building notifications that have not been rejected and consent to building projects by the state or the Länder also count as granted building permits.

The following figures are collected: number of buildings, number of dwellings, the habitable floor area [m²], the useful floor area [m²], the volume to be constructed  [m³],  the number of rooms in dwellings and estimated costs of the building work.

The reporting units are building inspectorates and building owners. Observation units comprise residential and non-residential buildings requiring building permits.

Residential and non-residential buildings requiring building permits which is about 250.000 cases.

Country as a whole.

Since the 1950s.

Not applicable.

Absolute figures.

Month.

The laws regulating the collection, treatment and dissemination of statistical data are the Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 of the European Parliament and of the Council on European business statistics, repealing 10 legal acts in the field of business statistics (EBS-Regulation),concerning short-term statistics with implementing acts (e.g. Commission Regulation 2020/1197  of 30 July 2020 concerning the definitions) as well as the Federal Statistics Act (1987) and the law on building statistics (HbauStatG of 1998).

Data sent to Eurostat may contain confidential data to compile the European aggregate.

Confidentiality is guaranteed by section 16 of the Federal Statistics Act. It requires that respondents must be informed about their rights and obligations in providing statistical information. This rule is strictly followed. It also applies to the notification that individual data are only used for statistical purposes and - subject to protection procedures - for scientific purposes.

Furthermore, Chapter V “Statistical Confidentiality” of Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council applies.

As regards the confidentiality of data, methods of primary and secondary confidentiality checking have been developed and are being used.

A release calendar containing the precise release dates for the reference periods in the following twelve months is published on the website of destatis.

www.destatis.de > press & services > press > preview

https://www.destatis.de/EN/PressServices/Press/preview/ReleaseCalendar.html

Indices are simultaneously released to all parties. The data are available at the database “GENESIS-Online” for all users at the same time. Identification of internal government access to data before release in accordance with Principle 6.7 of the European Statistics Code of Practice is not applicable.

Monthly.

Not available.

Printed publications have been substituted by online-publications.

Indices are also published at the time series database “GENESIS-Online”

https://www-genesis.destatis.de/genesis/online/data?operation=sprachwechsel&language=en

The building permits variables (number of buildings, number of dwellings, habitable floor area [m²], useful floor area [m²], volume to be constructed [m³], number of rooms in dwellings and estimated costs of the building work) are published for residential and non- residential buildings and for the breakdowns by type of building or by type of ownership.

Regional figures are published by the statistical offices of the Länder at a more aggregated level.

Not available.

Data (i.e. Variable 411”Number of permitted dwellings in new residential buildings” and Variable 412 “Useful floor area or equivalent”) are monthly transmitted to Eurostat. Other international institutions receive data upon request.

Information on methodology related to statistics on building permits can be found in “Informationen zur Bautätigkeit“

Standardized quality reports are published in German language on the website of destatis:

https://www.destatis.de/DE/Methoden/Qualitaet/Qualitaetsberichte/Bauen/baugenehmigungen.pdf?__blob=publicationFile

The data of German official statistics enjoy a reputation of high reliability in Germany and abroad. Destatis has committed itself to assure and further enhance the level of quality already attained. In order to achieve this task – also in the ESS – the activities of destatis are based on quality guidelines. To assure quality in the long term, destatis applies a variety of systematic quality assurance measures, among others the European Statistics Code of Practice.

Detailed descriptions can be found here:

https://www.destatis.de/EN/Methods/Quality/_node.html

Information on the quality assessment of building permits is provided in “Informationen zur Bautätigkeit”. The overall assessment is satisfactory.

Information on building permits is significant to national and international users which are in particular Eurostat, business associations, economic research institutes, universities, the media and also the interested public.

Destatis conducts user satisfaction surveys in various sectors of statistics. The Statistical Advisory Committee (Statistischer Beirat) represents the interests of the users of federal statistics and regularly consults with destatis.

Additionally, user satisfaction is measured by the number of monthly visits on specialized publications on the website of destatis and the respective number of printed products sold or downloads, quarterly downloads from the on-line database “GENESIS”, downloads of the Statistical Yearbook sorted by chapters and the number of external queries via the costumer management system.

STS requirements according to EU regulations and national laws are fulfilled.

Data on building permits are collected by census without sampling errors and biases.

Sampling errors do not occur as data are collected by exhaustive use of administrative information.

The response rate is 100%. The response is obligatory. Otherwise, fines can be imposed up to EUR 5,000.

Results are published 60 days after the end of the reference month (t+60).

All publication deadlines are met.

Consistent time series of the recent base year are available since 1994 since Germany is covered as a whole. Time series prior to 1994 refer to the former territory of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Consistent time series of the recent base year are available since 1994 since Germany is covered as a whole. Time series prior to 1994 refer to the former territory of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Statistics implemented in the law on building statistics (HBauStatG) are combined. In this context, building permits represent the basic output parameter which connects other statistics on building activities. The statistics on building completions, for example, is connected to building permits via an identifier. Further characteristics of building permits are taken unless they are modified. The statistics on building completions are the basis for updating housing stock as well as statistics on building demolitions. Statistics on unfinished building projects, in turn, link building permits to statistics on building completions.

Variable 411 (number of permitted dwellings in new residential buildings) and Variable 412 (useful floor area or equivalent) are coherent.

Costs amount to approximately EUR 15,000 per month.

The general revision policy of the Federal Statistical Office is published under the following URL:

https://www.destatis.de/EN/Methods/Quality/GeneralRevisionsPolicy.html

This policy applies to national publications and data sent to Eurostat.

There are no data revisions on building permits. Publication errors are corrected in accordance with the general destatis policy on non-scheduled revisions which deals with publication errors.

Vintage data starting from 1952 to 2000 are printed only. All data are processed electronically from the year 2000 onwards.

There are no routine revisions on building permits (MAR=MR=0).

The data set is based on the exhaustive use of administrative data. Collected raw figures come from administrative source used to deliver building permits.

Since the type of source is administrative data, criteria for stratification and threshold values/percentages are not applicable.

Data on building permits are collected monthly.

All data is taken from the administrative forms used to deliver building permits. The questionnaire used is the building permits survey form. It was most recently changed for the 2012 reference year.

Data validation is carried out via self-made tools.

Estimating non-response is not relevant since the response rate is 100%.

Moreover, estimates for grossing up to population levels are not available.

Building permits are expressed in absolute values. There is no index calculation.

Methods of weighting and chaining are not relevant either.

no adjustment.

None.