Accredited official statistics

MOD Land Holdings: background quality report 2023

Published 25 May 2023

1. Contact

This publication has been produced by the Data Exploitation team in the Defence Infrastructure Organisation.

We welcome feedback on our statistical products. If you have any comments or questions about this publication or about our statistics in general, you can contact us as follows:

Email: Analysis-ChiefStatsOffice@mod.gov.uk

If you wish to correspond by mail, our postal address is:

Data Exploitation (National Statistics)

Defence Infrastructure Organisation Head Office

St George’s House

DMS Whittington Barracks

Lichfield

Staffordshire

WS14 9PY

For general MOD enquiries, please call: 020 7218 9000.

2. Introduction & Statistical Presentation

This is an annual publication which provides figures on the Ministry of Defence UK land holdings, by Top Level Budget (TLB) holder, country, type of use and whether owned, leased or with legal rights on 1 April each year for 2000 to 2023. These holdings include land declared as surplus to defence requirements and does not provide information on overseas Defence estate.

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) publishes a wide range of statistics with the main purpose to; inform policy and decision making within the Department, to measure the performance of the Ministry of Defence against Government and Parliamentary targets and to inform general debate in Government, Parliament and the public.

MOD is one of the largest landowners in the country, with an estate approximately equal to 1.4% of the UK land mass. The estate is critical to the effectiveness of the Armed Forces. It is used for training and accommodation and provides a base from which operations can be instigated. The MOD has published land holdings and building statistics since 1981.

3. Statistical Processing

3.1 Source Data

Data is provided from administrative systems in the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO).

The land holding figures are derived from the DIO Infrastructure Management System (IMS) which was developed and has been used since 2014. It is a live database which is continuously updated with the most up to date information and is now the main data gathering system within DIO. The IMS contains information on all property assets that are owned, occupied or over which the MOD hold rights. The areas of each property are calculated from computerised mapping to provide the most accurate representation of the size of the Defence Estate.

3.2 Frequency of data collection

Data is collected from the system every 1 April (annually) for the purposes of this publication.

3.3 Data collection

An extract is taken from IMS and stored within DIO’s Data Warehouse.

3.4 Data validation

The extracts are currently taken and put through a series of validation checks based upon previous extracts. As a result of these checks, if appropriate, some edits may be made to the data to ensure the basic quality. It is then made available to the Data Exploitation team where they undertake further checks, using their expert knowledge and experience. Once the data is confirmed the database is queried to produce the range of tables. These tables undergo several rounds of checking and scrutiny to ensure the outputs are accurate before being published.

3.5 Data compilation

All the tables in this publication are National Statistics. Percentages are calculated from the unrounded data and presented to one decimal place. Additionally, totals and sub-totals are rounded separately and so may not equal the sums of their rounded parts.

Whilst the following information is included within the main report it is included here for consistency purposes (all are applicable from 2011):

The figures in the publication have a number of notable inclusions and exclusions (all are applicable from 2011):

• The figures presented include land occupied by all MOD TLB holders (including United States Visiting Forces (USVF) occupied sites); all Trading Funds and Agencies (including Defence Electronics and Components Agency, Defence Science & Technology Laboratory (DSTL) and the Hydrographic Office).

• Civil estate (for example offices) owned by MOD that are currently being used by another Government Department, and not at all by MOD, are excluded.

• The reserve (or volunteer) estate is included from 2016, this is due to a data quality improvement. Comparable figures for earlier years are not available.

• The Rights figures for England & Scotland include those agreements where Training on Private Land (ToPL) has been formalised with the landowner through a legal agreement. In Wales significant amounts of ToPL occurs on an informal agreement basis so these figures are not included. As most of the land held under Rights agreements is used for training, which is driven by operational requirements, the extent of Rights held can vary significantly from year to year.

• Changes to the estate which have not been captured on IMS at the time the data was extracted for this publication are not included. If any changes occur, the figures will be revised at the earliest opportunity.

4. Quality Management

4.1 Quality Assurance

The MOD’s quality management process for Official Statistics consists of three elements:

1. Regularly monitoring and assessing quality risk via an annual assessment.

2. Providing a mechanism for reporting and reviewing revisions/corrections to Official Statistics.

3. Ensuring Background Quality Reports are published alongside reports and are updated regularly.

4.2 Quality Assessment

The most recent quality risk assessed for this publication was low.

5. Relevance

5.1 User needs

This publication is the primary means by which information on the MOD’s Land Holdings is made widely available to academics, media, and general users. These statistics are used to inform and measure MOD Land Holdings and gain insight into further areas such as, size and condition of the MOD estate, assist in understanding the impact of initiatives and policy on MOD estate, and set the context for other information on Defence. They are also used to answer parliamentary questions and Freedom of Information requests.

MOD is required to publicly account for all its assets, including knowing where they are and how they are used. While internal systems are sufficient for MOD use, this publication makes information available publicly, regularly and as a time series.

Definitions and other information are also included in the tables so that the data are set in context and can be understood by a lay audience, as well as those with professional interests.

The MOD has previously held regular consultation meetings with users of Defence Official Statistics, which provided a forum for user feedback on their needs and perceptions. Proposed changes were set out at the consultation meetings in order to gain feedback from both internal and external users. In April 2016, a public consultation was held on the MOD’s Statistics Plan. The MOD invites users to provide feedback to the statistical output teams on any of their publications or reports using the contact information on the front of the publication.

6. Accuracy and Reliability

6.1 Overall Accuracy

The data in these tables has been extracted from a MOD database, the IMS, which is currently considered to be reliable and there are no significant concerns over the accuracy of data. The information in this publication, and the accompanying supplementary tables, have been taken from the Infrastructure Management System (IMS). IMS was implemented by DIO in 2014 as a mechanism to manage the defence infrastructure more effectively. Prior to the implementation of IMS, an asset verification exercise took place to capture accurately the defence estate. DIO have a clear process to ensure that IMS is updated with any changes to the estate, so the information about the defence estate is reflective of the current situation. However administrative data, more generally, can be subject to data capture errors such as lags to changes in data, or typing errors. If any revisions are required to the data, they will be made at the earliest opportunity.

In addition to being manually checked by DIO staff who have carried out the data extraction and collation, the figures are also reviewed by a subject matter expert. The data in these tables have also been subjected to a check by Government Statisticians.

6.2 Data Revisions

Data revisions are handled in accordance with the MOD’s Official Statistics Revisions and Corrections Policy.

In the accompanying supplementary tables, a small amendment has been made to the 2018 and 2021 for Rights Held by Other. These were previously both marked as ‘[low]’. A minor error was noted, and this has been revised in this edition.

7. Timeliness and Punctuality

7.1 Timeliness

The data is extracted on 1 April each year. The extract is checked by subject matter experts and Government Statisticians then compiled into tables which enable the publication documents to be created. This process takes approximately 4 weeks.

Following this, the draft publication is quality assured by subject matter experts and Government Statisticians, any feedback is considered and actioned ready for finalising the publication. The final publication is sent to the Publication Team ready for the release of the Statistics. This process takes approximately 3 weeks.

In total, the process from the reference period for the statistics takes approximately 7 weeks, which informs the publication date.

In 2017, data was extracted 5 days after the 1st of the month. This was to allow for any lags to changes in data.

7.2 Punctuality

As a National Statistic, the release date for this publication was pre-announced on the GOV.UK Official Statistics Release Calendar in accordance with the guidance set out in the Code of Practice for Statistics.

8. Coherence and Comparability

The data tables cover the years 2000 to 2023.

The statistics presented show both overall UK land holdings and the holdings for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland separately. This publication does not offer any comparisons with holdings elsewhere and no demand for such comparisons has been identified. The form of the data allows users to make comparisons (e.g. international comparisons, comparisons to other land users) themselves.

9. Accessibility and Clarity

The report is published on the MOD Land Holdings page on GOV.UK as a HTML document. The tables are available as an OpenDocument Spreadsheet (ODS) file to enable the figures to be reused.

Within the tables there is further information to clarify definitions, advise users of caveats in the data and explain changes since previous years.

The background information section assists with the accessibility and clarity of this bulletin by setting out the context of the statistics, providing definitions and explanations of the terms used and giving some brief information on methods and data quality.

10. Trade-offs between Output Quality Components

The process for collating information requires substantial checking and includes approval by the DIO board. Although the data is requested early, it is often not finalised until close to the publication date and could not be published earlier. However, DIO have brought the release date forward from August to May since the 2015 publication.

11. Cost and Respondent Burden

The outputs are produced from the administrative data provided by the DIO. The benefit of the MOD publishing the data on land holdings is that these administrative data are placed in the public domain, and as National Statistics, in a way that ensures their adherence to quality standards and independence from political interference. The small burden that this places on the data suppliers is considered to be worthwhile to achieve this, and the consequent public accountability provided by their publication.

12. Confidentiality and Security

12.1 Confidentiality – Policy

We adhere to the principles and protocols laid out in the Code of Practice for Statistics and comply with pre-release access arrangements. The Pre-Release Access List is available online.

All staff involved in the production process have signed the Data Protection Act and all MOD, Civil Service and data protection regulations are adhered to.

12.2 Confidentiality – Data Treatment

All data is supplied at an aggregate level to significantly reduce a security disclosure risk.

12.3 Security

All data is stored, accessed and analysed using the MOD’s restricted network and IT systems.