Building Approvals, Australia methodology

The following tables are available electronically via the ABS web site.

Note: not all series in the table go back to the earliest start date.

Buildings primarily providing short-term or temporary accommodation on a commercial basis. Includes:

• Self-contained, short-term apartments (e.g. serviced apartments);
• Hotels (predominantly accommodation), motels, boarding houses, cabins; and
• Other short-term accommodation n.e.c. (e.g. migrant hostels, youth hostels, lodges).
   

Building used in the provision or support of aged care facilities, excluding dwellings (e.g. retirement villages). Includes aged care facilities with and without medical care.

Buildings associated with agriculture and aquaculture activities, including bulk storage of produce (e.g. shearing shed, hay shed, shearers’ quarters).

Building activity carried out on existing buildings. Includes alterations and additions to floor area, the structural design of a building, and affixing rigid components which are integral to the functioning of the building.

A building is a rigid, fixed and permanent structure which has a roof. Its intended purpose is primarily to house people, plant, machinery, vehicles, goods or livestock. An integral feature of a building’s design is the provision for regular access by persons in order to satisfy its intended use.

A building job is a construction project comprising work to one or more buildings.

Annually-reweighted chain Laspeyres volume indexes referenced to the current price values in a chosen reference year (i.e. the year when the quarterly chain volume measures sum to the current price annual values). Chain Laspeyres volume measures are compiled by linking together (compounding) movements in volumes, calculated using the average prices of the previous financial year, and applying the compounded movements to the current price estimates of the reference year. Quarterly chain volume estimates are benchmarked to annual chain volume estimates, so that the quarterly estimates for a financial year sum to the corresponding annual estimate.

Buildings primarily occupied with or engaged in commercial trade or work intended for commercial trade, including buildings used primarily in wholesale and retail trades, office and transport activities.

Building activity which converts a non-residential building to a residential building (e.g. conversion of a warehouse to residential apartments).

A dwelling is a self-contained suite of rooms, including cooking and bathing facilities, intended for long-term residential use. A dwelling may comprise part of a building or the whole of a building. Regardless of whether they are self-contained or not, rooms within buildings offering institutional care (e.g. hospitals) or temporary accommodation (e.g. motels, hostels and holiday apartments) are not defined as dwellings. Such rooms are included in the appropriate category of non-residential building approvals. Dwellings can be created in one of four ways: through new work to create a residential building; through alteration/addition work to an existing residential building; through either new or alteration/addition work on non-residential building; or through conversion of a non-residential building to a residential building.

Dwellings in other residential buildings and dwellings created in non-residential buildings.

Buildings used in the provision or support of educational services, including group accommodation buildings (e.g. classrooms, school canteens, dormitories).

Buildings used in the provision of entertainment and recreational facilities or services (e.g. libraries, museums, casinos, sporting facilities).

Buildings housing, or associated with, production and assembly processes of intermediate and final goods.

Dwellings not having their own private grounds and usually sharing a common entrance, foyer or stairwell.

Buildings used in the provision of non-aged care medical services (e.g. nursing quarters, laboratories, clinics).

A detached building primarily used for long term residential purposes consisting of one dwelling unit. Includes detached residences associated with a non-residential building, and kit and transportable homes.

Buildings used for warehousing and the production and assembly activities of industrial establishments, including factories and plants.

Building activity which will result in the creation of a building which previously did not exist.

Buildings primarily intended for purposes other than long term residence.

Buildings primarily used in the provision of professional services or public administration (e.g. offices, insurance or finance buildings).

Buildings other than houses which are primarily used for long-term residential purposes. Other residential buildings includes: semidetached, row or terrace houses or townhouses; and flats, units or apartments.

Buildings used for or associated with worship or in support of programs sponsored by religious bodies (e.g. church, temple, church hall, religious dormitories).

Buildings primarily used for long-term residential purposes. Residential buildings are categorised as houses or other residential buildings.

Buildings primarily used in the sale of goods to intermediate and end users.

Dwellings having their own private grounds with no other dwellings above or below.

Total residential building is comprised of houses and other residential building. It does not include dwellings in non-residential buildings.

Buildings primarily used in the provision of transport services. Includes:

• Passenger transport buildings (e.g. passenger terminals);
• Non-passenger transport buildings (e.g. freight terminals);
• Commercial car parks (excluded are those built as part of, and intended to service, other distinct building developments); and
• Other transport buildings n.e.c.
   

Buildings primarily used for storage of goods, excluding produce storage.

For information on the institutional environment of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), including the legislative obligations of the ABS, financing and governance arrangements, and mechanisms for scrutiny of ABS operations, please see ABS Institutional Environment.

The Building Approvals collection gathers data on a monthly basis relating to the number and value of residential and non-residential building approvals, from information provided by approving authorities. Data collected are available as part of the normal administrative building approval process, and are generally readily available from the relevant local government or other approving authority.

The collection is a census of all approved building jobs (above specified value limits) and comprises the following activities:

• construction of new buildings
• alterations and additions to existing buildings
• approved non-structural renovation and refurbishment work
• approved installation of integral building fixtures.
   

For the purposes of this collection, a building is a rigid, fixed and permanent structure which has a roof. Its intended purpose is primarily to house people, plant, machinery, vehicles, goods or livestock. An integral feature of a building's design is the provision for regular access by persons in order to satisfy its intended use.

Buildings are classified by ownership, based on the sector (public or private) of the intended owner of the completed building at the time of approval. They are further classified by Type of Building (e.g, "residential", "non-residential") and by Type of Work ("new", "alterations and additions" and "conversions").

Building Approvals, Australia (cat. no. 8731.0) is issued monthly and released 4-5 weeks after the reference month. A supplementary release of small area Building Approvals data occurs up to 10 working days after the main publication is released.

The Building Approvals collection is a census and hence is not subject to sampling error. However, issues such as coverage of reporting authorities and completeness and timeliness of reporting, as well as the quality of the data reported, do exist.

Building Approvals data is collected as administrative by-product from local government and other reporting authorities and can be sensitive to changes in legislation and administrative practices which can vary from State to State.

The introduction of private certification introduced another step in the building approval process. Private certifiers lodge approval details with reporting authorities, who then load them to their systems and report all building approvals in their jurisdiction to the ABS. This extra step can cause a lag in the provision of building approvals to the ABS. This can mean, for some authorities, that complete data for a particular month is not available until the following month.

Revisions as a result of data collection problems are made to Building Approval estimates. There are a number of reasons for data collection problems such as reporting authorities experiencing problems with their processing systems, reporting incomplete data and not reporting within the correct time frame. In these cases an estimate is included for that month. Overall, revisions are generally confined to the last 12-18 months, depending on their significance.

Value data reported for houses are generally a reliable indicator of the completed value, but for "other residential buildings" and "non-residential buildings" they can differ significantly from the completed value of the building. This is because final costs and contracts have not been established before council approval is gained.

Most data are directly comparable over different collection cycles. The original estimates of the number and value of dwelling units approved, in new residential buildings, are available at the Australia level from January 1956.

The Type of Work classification refers to the building activity carried out: new, alterations and additions, or conversions. Up to and including the December 1997 issue of Building Approvals, Australia (cat. no. 8731.0), conversions were published as part of a category called "Conversions, etc". This category included dwellings created by:

• alterations and additions to residential buildings,
• conversion of non-residential buildings to residential buildings (i.e. "conversions"), and
• construction of non-residential buildings.
   

From the January 1998 issue onwards, the three components of "conversions, etc" are shown separately in their own right in some tables. However, the corresponding value of the dwellings created as part of the construction of non-residential buildings (the third component above) remains in the value of the appropriate non-residential building category.

The Value of Approval includes the 10% Goods and Services Tax (GST) from 1/07/2000. However, this is unlikely to have caused a significant one-off impact between June and July because it is likely that values inclusive of GST had been gradually included in the series for the 6 months or more leading up to 1/07/2000. This is because if a building job was not expected to have been completed prior to 1/07/2000, then it was known that the portion not completed would be subject to the GST. For further discussion see the Technical Note "Factors that influence the valuation of building approvals" in the Building Approvals, Australia, Jul 2000 (cat. no. 8731.0).

The survey has adjusted to increasing current prices by adjusting the size of the approvals that are included in the collection. From July 1990 these statistics include:

• All approved residential building jobs (new and alterations and additions) valued at $10,000 or more;
• All approved non-residential building jobs (new and alterations and additions) valued at $50,000 or more.
   

The major series estimates for this collection are available in original, seasonally adjusted and trend series. To find out more information on seasonal adjustment and trend estimates please see Timeseries Analysis Frequently Asked Questions or refer to the Explanatory Notes for Building Approvals, Australia (cat no. 8731.0).

Where it has been identified by a council or other approving authority that approvals submitted from its jurisdiction are on a GST-exclusive basis, the ABS has made adjustments to the data to ensure that values are consistent with other data collected and are inclusive of GST.

Building approvals data is administrative by-product data that is available to the general public. However, the data is collected under authority of the Census and Statistics Act, and data published or made available can relate to individual building jobs approved. Information relating to individual approvals can be released under clause 2 (2) (d) of the Statistics Determination 1983.

Data cubes containing small area information are available from the ABS website. The data cubes are available at the Statistical Local Area level under the ASGC for financial years from 2001-02 to 2011-12. Data cubes at the Statistical Area 2 level of the ASGS are available for financial years from 2011-12 onwards.

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