Pulse.Assent

England

In England, the August data shows house prices have risen on average by 0.2% since July 2018. The annual price rise of 2.9% takes the average property value to £249,748.

The regional data for England indicates that:

• the East Midlands experienced the greatest monthly price rise, up by 1.5%
• the East of England saw the most significant monthly price fall, down by 1.1%
• house prices in London fell by 0.2% in the year to August 2018

Price change by region for England

Repossession sales by volume for England

The lowest number of repossession sales in June 2018 was in the East of England.

The highest number of repossession sales in June 2018 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 July 2018. An annual price fall of 0.2% takes the average property value to £486,304.

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 1.9% since July 2018. An annual price rise of 6.2% takes the average property value to £162,374.

There were 57 repossession sales for Wales in June 2018.

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 rose by 3.2% in the year to August 2018, down from 3.4% in the year to July 2018.

The UK Property Transaction Statistics for August 2018 showed that on a seasonally adjusted basis, the number of transactions on residential properties with a value of £40,000 or greater was 99,120. This is 2.6% lower compared to a year ago. Between July and August 2018, transactions increased by 1.3%.

House prices grew fastest in the East Midlands region increasing by 6.5% in the year to August 2018, followed by the West Midlands region which increased by 5.1% over the year. House prices in London fell by 0.2% in the year to August 2018. Annual growth in London house prices has been around zero for the last 6 months.

See the economic statement.

Notes to editors

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 September 2018 UK HPI will be published at 9.30am on Wednesday 14 November 2018. 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 Revisions to the UK HPI data). 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 statisticsare 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 £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.
21. For further information about HM Land Registry visit www.gov.uk/land-registry
22. Follow us on Twitter @HMLandRegistry, our blog, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Contact

The G7 Foreign Ministers said:

We, the G7 Foreign Ministers, of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and the High Representative of the European Union, affirm our commitment to defending freedom of expression and protection of a free press.

We remain very troubled by the disappearance of prominent Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Those bearing responsibility for his disappearance must be held to account.

We encourage Turkish-Saudi collaboration and look forward to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia conducting a thorough, credible, transparent, and prompt investigation, as announced.

Further information

• Follow the Foreign Secretary on Twitter @Jeremy_Hunt
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The Charity Commission says it continues to have concerns about systemic underreporting of serious incidents by domestic and international charities, as it publishes the findings of its interim taskforce on safeguarding.

The task force – one of a suite of measures announced by the Commission – was set up to respond robustly and consistently to the significantly increased volume of serious incident reports on safeguarding matters submitted by charities following the safeguarding revelations involving Oxfam and Save the Children in February.

Charities submitted a total of 2,114 reports of serious incidents relating to safeguarding incidents or issues between 20 February and 30 September 2018, compared to 1,580 serious incident reports about safeguarding received in the whole of 2017-18, and 1,203 received in 2016-17.

The Commission says that it is vital that charities, whether they work domestically or around the world, report serious incidents to the regulator. Doing so provides reassurance that trustees are responding appropriately and as the public would expect to the issue itself. The Commission says data on serious incident reporting also allows it to better understand risks facing the sector and take appropriate action.

The taskforce also undertook a ‘deep dive’ of the regulator’s records relating to safeguarding concerns dating back to April 2014 to identify any potential failure in full and frank disclosure by charities, and to ensure charities and the Commission had taken appropriate follow-up actions to deal with the incident reported.

Analysis of reports

The regulator undertook detailed analysis of safeguarding reports it received between 1 February and 31 May 2018 (1228 in total) to better understand the nature of the incident being reported and the type of charity making the report.

This found that:

• The top 5 types of charity that submitted reports during that time were: overseas aid/ famine relief (29%), disability (12%), religious activities (12%), education /training (12%) and younger people (11%)
• The majority of reports related to incidents of or concerns about potential harm to individuals, including but not limited to sexual abuse or harassment
• In cases where an individual was identified as having allegedly been harmed, 47.5% related to a child, and 32% related to an adult (in the remainder the age of the individual could not be identified from the initial report).

Significant and systemic underreporting

The Commission’s report finds that, despite recent increases in serious incident reporting, there is significant and systemic underreporting of incidents by charities working at home and abroad:

• only 1.5% of registered charities have submitted any kind of serious incident report since 2014
• only 0.9% of charities have reported a safeguarding incident since 2014
• it is concerned in particular that there may be certain groups of charities in which under-reporting is especially prevalent

Sarah Atkinson, Director of Policy, Planning and Communications at the Charity Commission, said:

The public rightly expect charities to demonstrate the highest standards of ethical behaviour and attitude. That includes taking action when something has gone badly wrong, or when there’s been a near miss. Making a serious incident report to the Commission is not in itself an admission of wrongdoing or failure. Quite the reverse: it demonstrates that a charity is responding properly to incident or concern. So we welcome the increase in reporting by some charities, especially international aid charities that appear to have improved their reporting since February’s revelations. But we’re not convinced that we’re seeing everything we should be. Working with charities, we need to bring about a culture change on reporting to ensure charities are safe places, better able to make a difference to people’s lives.

The Commission has already updated its guidance in reporting serious incidents and is now taking a number of further steps:

• in light of its commitment, set out in its new strategy to better understand the wider context in which charities work and to help shape the environment in which they operate, the Commission is now conducting further analysis on the patterns of reporting types or groups of charities where under-reporting may be especially prevalent
• developing a new digital tool for reporting serious incidents to help make it easier for charities to provide the information the Commission needs at the outset.
• creating checklists to sit alongside its existing guidance to help better inform trustees about the key information required in any serious incident report. These checklists will be available in the next few weeks.
• further reviewing its guidance on reporting serious incidents to ensure it is as clear and user friendly as possible
• working with the sector and other government departments to raise awareness of the importance and benefits of reporting serious incidents and target under-reporting

“No major concerns” about historic reports of serious incidents

As part of its ‘deep-dive’, the taskforce reviewed over 5,500 historic records relating to safeguarding concerns dating back to 2014. The purpose of this work was to identify any possible gaps in full and frank disclosure in charities and to determine, based on the information in the regulator’s records, whether the Commission and charities had responded appropriately to each incident.

Today’s report makes clear that, based on the information recorded at the time, there are no historic cases giving rise to serious or urgent concerns about either the Commission’s handling at the time, or a charity’s response.

The taskforce identified only one case in which it was not clear, from the records, whether a potentially criminal matter had been reported to the police. The taskforce took quick action to ensure that the matter had been reported.

Sarah Atkinson said:

This deep-dive was an important, but limited exercise designed to interrogate our records and establish whether there are any red flags arising from the way a charity reported an issue to us, or from the way we responded at the time. I am reassured by the findings of this work, but would stress that any charity that may not yet have reported a historic serious incident to us, or may have concerns about the information they provided to us in a historic report, to take urgent action to remedy this by getting in touch with us.

Improved whistleblowing guidance

As part of its response to the safeguarding revelations, the Commission also committed to reviewing its approach to whistleblowing – reports from individuals currently involved in a charity as a staff member or volunteers.

The Commission has now published updated guidance that helps people better understand when, and how, they can report possible wrongdoing to the regulator so that it is as easy as possible for people who make what is often a brave decision to come to the Commission with concerns. The Commission is also providing further training for front line staff and managers on the knowledge and skills needed to handle whistleblowers and the concerns they raise effectively. It also plans to pilot a dedicated helpline service for whistleblowers starting later this year.

Updated guidance on reporting serious incidents by charities

The Commission has also updated its guidance to charities on reporting serious incidents, clarifying a number of areas where charities have indicated that it was not clear enough. For example, the Commission has provided additional guidance on when and how to report potential criminal offences that may have taken place abroad.

The regulator continues to review this guidance to ensure it is as clear and user-friendly as possible.

Ends

Notes to editors

1. The Commission is the registrar and regulator of charities in England and Wales. We regulate over 168,000 charities working domestically and internationally.
2. We opened a statutory inquiry into Oxfam in February and have published the scope of the inquiry. We also opened a statutory inquiry into Save the Children in April.
3. The Charity Commission has an important regulatory role in ensuring that trustees comply with their legal duties and responsibilities in managing their charity. In the context of safeguarding issues, we have a specific regulatory role which is focused on the conduct of trustees and the steps they take to protect beneficiaries and other persons who come into contact with the charity.
4. Our aim is to make sure that charities that work with or provide services to vulnerable beneficiaries comply with their legal duties, and take reasonable steps to protect them from harm and minimise the risk of abuse.
5. Safeguarding has been a priority regulatory risk issue for the Commission since 2010 and this will continue. We have increased and intensified our regulatory interventions on safeguarding, including on a number of high profile cases, and our joint work with the Department for International Development and law enforcement agencies.
6. Our remit requires us to work effectively with other UK specialist authorities. The Commission is not an inspectorate or agency, similar to CQC or Ofsted. We are not a criminal prosecuting authority, nor an arm of the police, which means we should not be expected to gather information for or report on charities’ behalf to the police or other regulators or agencies.
7. Regardless of our specific remit and role, the number of incidents we are dealing with is increasing, and demand on our services in almost every area is growing. With around 350 permanent staff, dealing with 100,000 contact requests a year, regulating 950,000 trustee roles and 168,000 registered charities, we are limited in the proactive engagement we can have with individual charities and trustees.