Research and analysis

Building Safety Programme: estimates of hospital and residential crown buildings in England

Published 5 July 2021

Applies to England

© Crown copyright 2021

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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/building-safety-programme-estimates-of-hospital-and-residential-crown-buildings-in-england/building-safety-programme-estimates-of-hospital-and-residential-crown-buildings-in-england

Introduction

The purpose of this publication is to provide information on the number of buildings over 18 metres in height in England which are referred to in the Building Safety Bill.

This data release is an ad-hoc release and does not constitute an Official Statistics or National Statistics release. The data contained within this ad hoc release will be incorporated into future MHCLG management information releases from the Building Safety Programme.

Hospital buildings

The total number of hospital sites in England as of March 2020 was 1,261. This is taken from Estates Returns Information Collection (ERIC) NHS data of individually reported sites, published in January 2021. An individually reported hospital site is defined as an NHS site of either over 500m2 or with over 10 inpatient beds.

A proportion of buildings and building heights per site was derived using Ordnance Survey (OS) ® MasterMap data and applied to the site number from ERIC data. Of buildings on these sites:

  • an estimated 274 (5%) buildings on hospital sites are over 18m in height
  • an estimated 440 (8%) buildings on hospital sites are between 11 and 18m in height
  • a total of 714 buildings (14%) on hospital sites are estimated to be over 11m in height

However, these estimates have important caveats:

  1. These numbers represent MHCLG’s best estimate of the number of buildings on hospital sites over 18m in height, and do not correspond to specific buildings.
  2. We have used maximum height, rather than highest occupiable floor.
  3. They are likely to be an over-estimate, as not all buildings on hospital sites will have in-patient beds and be ‘hospitals’. Further work would be needed at hospital level to determine the exact number and specific addresses of buildings.
  4. The methodology used to analyse heights of buildings on hospital sites is at prototype stage. As a result, there are likely to be some data quality issues, and on further examination there may be some variation in the range or height proportions.

Further information on the methodology is available in the technical notes of this release.

Crown buildings

The Crown Estates estimate there are approximately 70 Crown buildings which are over 18m tall and with at least 2 residential dwellings.

Technical notes

Definitions

Dwelling: A self-contained unit of accommodation.

Crown buildings: a building in which there is a Crown interest or a Duchy interest.

Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN): The UPRN is a unique identifier available for each address recorded within the AddressBase ® data.

Data collection

MHCLG used a variety of sources to inform these estimates, including:

Methodology: hospital buildings over 11 metres and over 18 metres

The total number of 1,261 hospital sites in England was taken from the 2019-2020 ERIC NHS data of individually reported sites. An individually reported hospital site is defined as and NHS site of either over 500m2 or with over 10 inpatient beds.

The number of hospital buildings in 11-18 and 18m+ height categories as of February 2021, have been calculated using proportions from connected topographic identifiers (TOIDs) in the OS ® MasterMap database on Functional Sites that have identified as a ‘hospital’ by GeoPlace LLP.

These data estimates are from an alpha prototype analysis using MasterMap data to identify connected polygons on sites identified as hospital sites. Maximum height was used in this estimate, rather than height of the highest occupiable floor.

There are a few key assumptions to this analysis:

  1. A connected structure represents a single building.
  2. A connected structure without a UPRN does not count as a building.
  3. The distribution of buildings and height information across OS MasterMap hospital sites is approximately correct across reported NHS sites from ERIC data.
  4. Maximum height is an acceptable substitute for highest occupiable floor height.

Data quality

These numbers represent MHCLG’s best estimate of the number of buildings on hospital sites over 18m in height, and do not correspond to specific buildings.

Part of the estimate is based on a count of unique property reference numbers (UPRNs) and the UPRN represents the hierarchy of the address and may not always correspond to the precise number of units within a connected building.

Also, quality issues with height information in OS ® MasterMap data mean that our estimates contain an element of uncertainty.

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