2025 Annual Report for Tenants and Leaseholders - Don't trust the numbers!

The latest Annual Report for Tenants and Leaseholders has just been published.

This table shows the key measures for the last 10 years (if you believe the published figures!)

• Properties let in the year increased to 1,058 from last year
• The average number of days to re-let a property has improved from 79 days to 70 days
• The percentage of "White British" people contains to fall at the same rate as last year to 65%
• The percentage of disable people continues to increase from 32% to 33%
• Expenditure has increased by 18% since last year
• Expenditure on new builds and acquisitions has increased by 61% since last year
• Expenditure on improvements have increased by 112% since last year

Data Errors

In my article covering last years annual report I pointed out a number of errors in the figures reported by BCC in their annual reports.

There are similar errors or inconsistencies in the figures in this report.

For example, last year BCC reported spending of £32,900,000 on "Improvement to existing housing stock", but in this years report they have changed that figure to £58,572,000, which is a difference of over £25 million pounds.

Either the figures they reported in last years report were incorrect, or the figures in this years report are incorrect. Or perhaps they are both incorrect and no-one knows how much money is spent!

It is clear that the figures in these annual reports should be taken with a big "pinch of salt" as there are clearly data quality issues with these annual reports.