Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia (SURS)

Short-term Business Statistics

Litostrojska 54, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia

Granted building permits. The purpose of the statistical survey on building permits is to obtain statistical data on construction activity for buildings on the basis of building permits issued by the administrative body. Data are important for: statistical monitoring of short-term changes in the construction activity (useful floor area, number of dwellings), business decision-making in construction and related activities, international comparisons.

Data are collected and published based on Classification of Types of Construction (CC) and transmitted to Eurostat based on Statistical Classification of Products by Activity (CPA).

This statistical survey covers all residential and non-residential buildings for which the administrative unit issued a building permit in the observed period (for new construction, extension and conversion-improvement). At extensions of dwellings we do not take into consideration extension of room or utility space. From 2015 on the data on building permits also cover building permits for buildings classified as non-complex buildings. These are smaller buildings (e.g. garages, sheds, huts, etc.) not intended for habitation. For these buildings the building investor obtains a building permit according to the simplified procedure.

Building permit is a decision with which the authorised administrative body allows construction and with which it prescribes concrete conditions that have to be taken into consideration.

Buildings are structures with one or more rooms into which a person can enter and are intended for residence or for performing an activity.

Residential buildings are buildings at least half of which is used for residential purposes.

Non-residential buildings are building more than half of which is not used for residential purposes.

Floor area of building is the sum total of floor area of all storeys of the building. It is defined by the valid technical regulation.

Volume of building is the sum total of the volume of all storeys of the building. It is defined by the valid technical regulation.

A dwelling is any structurally unified whole intended for residence, with one or more rooms, with or without appropriate utility spaces (kitchen, larder, hallway, bathroom, toilet) and with at least one separate entrance.

The useful floor space of a dwelling covers the usable area of the rooms, kitchen and other auxiliary interiors, the area of enclosed terraces and verandas, and the area enclosed by fitted cupboards. The area of garages, cellars, attics unsuitable for living and collective areas in two- and more dwelling buildings are not taken into account.

Reporting units are administrative units responsible for issuing building permits in Slovenia. Administrative units report required data on building permits in Spatial Information System, where all administrative acts relating to construction and space are recorded. Observation units are buildings for which the administrative unit issued building permits. 

The target statistical population are buildings for which the administrative units issued building permits.

The Republic of Slovenia.

Data are available from 1999.

Data are published as absolute figures, therefore the base period is not applicable.

Number of dwellings, floor area of buildings in square metres.

A month.

The survey is conducted in accordance with the Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 November 2019 on European business statistics, repealing 10 legal acts in the field of business statistics (CELEX: 32019R2152), Commission Implementing Regulatin (EU) 2020/1197 of 30 July 2020 aying down technical specifications and arrangements pursuant to 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 (CELEX: 32020R1197), The National Statistics Act (OJ RS, No. 45/95 and No. 9/01) and the current Annual Programme of Statistical Surveys.

Data are sent to Eurostat.

All data collected and published by the Statistical Office are governed by the National Statistics Act (OJ RS No. 45/95 and No. 9/01).

All published data are aggregated to such a level that there is no confidentiality problem.

The release calendar with advanced release dates for all months of the reference year is published at the beginning of the year on SURS website. The release calendar is publicly accessible.

The release calendar can be found on SURS website  http://www.stat.si/StatWeb/en/ReleaseCal

The most important information channel for data publication is the website http://www.stat.si/StatWeb/en/home. SURS publishes electronic and printed publications. SURS publishes several types of serial publications, different series and other publications which are according to the content intended for different users (e.g. general public, professional public, statistical experts). Statistical data and information are always published at 10.30. All releases are announced at the SURS website http://www.stat.si/StatWeb/en/ReleaseCal The data are released on the same date to all interested parties. No user has prior access to the data. The release policy determines the dissemination of statistical data to all users at the same time. Data which are published in the national publications are simultaneously sent in electronic form to Eurostat.

Data are disseminated monthly and annually to national users. From May 2021 data are disseminated monthly instead of quarterly to Eurostat. 

Monthly data on building permits are published in accordance with the release calendar as First Release at 10:30 (local time) on the day of release. Data are published as absolute figures. Data could be obtained on SURS website: http://www.stat.si/StatWeb/en/Field/Index/6/50

Data on building permits are published in First Release, SiStat Database and STAGE (cartographic application for displaying statistical data about Slovenia).

Data on building permits are available on SiStat Database: Construction - Construction of buildings and dwellings.

The entities entitled to obtain the statistically protected microdata include the registered research institutions, registered researchers and the researchers of government offices. Basic instructions concerning the access and the use of statistically protected microdata are available on the website: http://www.stat.si/StatWeb/en/StaticPages/Index/For-Researchers

The data on building permits are transmitted to Eurostat according to Commission Implementing Regulatin (EU) 2020/1197.

The main methodological reference is Eurostat's manual –European business statistics methodological manual for short-term business statistics, 2021 edition. Methodological explanations are available on http://www.stat.si/StatWeb/en/mainnavigation/methods-and-classifications/methodological-explanations

Quality report of the statistical survey on building permit is available on SURS website http://www.stat.si/StatWeb/en/Methods/QuestionnairesMethodologicalExplanationsQualityReports (theme: Construction, sub-theme: Construction of Buildings and Dwellings). 

The Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia operates on the basis of the National Statistics Act and Regulation (EC) No. 223/2009 on European statistics; in performing its tasks it follows the general principles of quality management, the European Statistics Code of Practice and the Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics. In line with the stated, SURS declares that it takes into account the following principles: professional independence, process orientation, quality of products and services, planning of improvements, data providers-friendly official statistics, user-oriented official statistics.

Quality assurance policy and documentation can be reached on SURS websites: http://www.stat.si/StatWeb/en/FundamentalPrinciples/QualityInStat (Code of Practice)and http://www.stat.si/StatWeb/en/FundamentalPrinciples/QualityInStat 

Data on building permits are produced in compliance with methodological requirements and standards. All statistics that are required by current Regulation are available. Unit response rate is 100%. The publication schedule is fixed and announced in advance for the First Release. Provisional data are published by the date of the receipt of the granted building permit. Provisional data are published 20 days after the end of reference period. In publishing the final data we take into consideration the official date of the granted building permit. Final data are published 4 months after the reference year. Data are available from 1999. Data are internally coherent. Results are displayed in the form of absolute figures in the First Release.

The main users are ministries and government departments, Eurostat, local communities, enterprises, researchers and media.
These data are important for:

• monitoring short-term trends in the construction sector
• review of interventions in place
• business decision-making in construction and related activities, industrial production,
• basis for the calculation of completed buildings and dwellings.

The principle users are asked about their needs, wishes and interests at the regular meetings, i.e. at the Business Statistics Advisory Committee.

All statistics that are required by Commission Implementing Regulatin (EU) 2020/1197 are available.

The survey is not conducted on the basis of a random sample, therefore there is no sampling error. The unit response rate is 100%, because administrative units can not issued the building permit if it is not recorded in the Spatial Information System, where all administrative acts relating to construction and space are recorded.

The survey is not conducted on the basis of a random sample, therefore there is no sampling error.

The survey covers all administrative units that issued building permits in Slovenia. The unit response rate is 100%, because administrative units can not issued the building permit if it is not recorded in the Spatial Information System. There are negligible non-sampling errors mainly due to typing mistakes or misunderstanding of methodological requirements. In the survey there is no item non-response, because administrative units have to report all data required. 

Provisional data are available 20 days after the end of reference period. Final data are available 4 months after the end of the reference year.

All news releases are published according to the announced release calendar.

Survey results are based on the requirements of the Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/1197, which is in use in all EU Member States. This ensures good comparability of data between countries and good quality of aggregates calculated from these data at the EU level.

Comparable time series are available from 1999 on.

No related statistical outputs. The results of the building permits survey are not confronted with other data sets.

Data are internally coherent. Each level of aggregated data is compiled directly from micro data.  

In 2023 the number of working hours spent for data verification, editing, calculation of the results, publishing, etc. was around 980. In 2023, 5972 building permits were issued and the administrative units spent around 597 hours per year to prepare and enter data in the Spatial Information System for statistical purposes.

Types of data revisions in relation to time of implementation

The reasons for revising data in relation to time of implementation are:

a) Regular revisions: inclusion of a more complete/additional data source or a change in the data source, seasonal adjustment and/or elimination of calendar effects;

b) Occasional revisions are a consequence of including a new/more complete/additional data source that becomes the standard in later data releases or a consequence of an unpredictable obstacle in data processing and publishing, and change in methodology.

More information about data revision at SURS are published on the website http://www.stat.si/dokument/5299/RevisionOfStatisticalDataMEgeneral.pdf The release calendar for all statistical surveys is accessible on the SURS website: http://www.stat.si/StatWeb/en/ReleaseCal

In the case of methodologic changes, the vintage data for building permits are available on the Si-stat data portal under archive data (theme: construction): http://pxweb.stat.si/pxweb/Database/Economy/Economy.asp  The same revision policy is applied to data released nationally and transmitted to Eurostat.  Data revision for building permits is planned and regular. Provisional data are published by the date of the receipt of the granted building permit to SURS and are published 20 days after the end of reference period. In publishing the final data we take into consideration the official date of the granted building permit. Revoked building permits are not taken into account. At the moment we do not use benchmarking.

Provisional data are published by the date of the receipt of the granted building permit and are published 20 days after the end of reference period. In publishing the final data we take into consideration the official date of the granted building permit.  Methodological changes and revisions are previosly discussed with the Business Statistics Advisory Committee and are announced to the public at the time of the change. If a revision is necessary due to an error, a new edition with explanatory notes is published as soon as possible. 

For number of new dwellings and floor area in square meters for new buildings the Mean Revision (MR) and Mean Absolute Revision (MAR) is calculated and is shown in the table below. 

Data are obtained from Spatial Information System managed by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Spatial Planning, where all administrative acts in Slovenia are gatherd. Administrative units have to enter data on granted building permits into the Spatial Information System. The source of data is the project documentation for obtaining the building permit, which is available at the department for environment and spatial planning within the administrative body.

Monthly.

Each month SURS receive an extraction from a Spatial Information System from the Ministry of Natural Resources and Spatial Planning.

Classifications and some basic controls are integrated in the Spatial Information System. Checking controls and editing are done in SOP application, which is Slovenian acronym for Statistical Data Processing. SOP application is supported by Oracle database, where data on building permits are stored and SAS, where general programs for data processing are. For checking data we use the internal consistency checks: we check the ratio between the floor area of the building and volume of the building, the ratio between the number and floor area of dwellings etc.  We do also some plausibility checks at macro level: for the reference month we compare the data on bildings and dwellings with the previous month and the same month of the previous year. 

If necessary data are statistically edited in SOP application with the combination of systematic corrections.

Calendar adjustment:Pre-tests for number of regressors are made, national holidays effects and easter effect are tested. Calendar effects are significant for 5 time series, but for 6 time series they are not significant.

• Trading days: Yes (Trading days for 4 time series, Working days for 1 time series)
• National holidays for Slovenia: Yes
• Leap year: No
• Moving holidays - Easter effect: No
• Type of calendar adjustment: regARIMA

Other pre-adjustment:

• Detection of outliers: automatic detection; careful inspection of additive outliers (AO), transitory changes (TC) and level shifts (LS); checking background information.
• Date of outlier and economic reason: Outliers are a consequence of economic changes (economic crisis or extraordinary events in enterprises ...); all deviations are checked.

Seasonal adjustments

• Software and method: JDemetra+ 2.2.0, TRAMO/SEATS.
• Selection of the model: Manual.
• Re-estimation of the parameters: Monthly (i.e. every time when new original data are available).
• Horizon of revisions: Seasonally adjusted data are revised monthly (i.e. every time when new original data are available). The whole time series is revised.
• Decomposition: Multiplicative.
• Adequacy of the model: Model checked for adequacy.
• Critical value for outlier detection: Automatically chosen.
• Filter length: Automatically chosen.
• Seasonal breaks: None.
• Direct/indirect seasonal adjustment: Direct seasonal adjustment. No indirect seasonal adjustment. Checks for residual seasonality are made.

Consistency amongst the different levels of breakdown: Series are directly adjusted, but taking into account the special characteristics of the components.

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