Until the end of the 19^th century, the general consensus was that housing was a private matter. With the rise of industrialisation, the working classes in urban areas faced a structural lack of low-cost housing, a sector avoided by investors. The widespread overcrowding and unsanitary conditions urged the leaders of the Third Republic to implement initiatives to improve housing. Two world wars, the emergence of mass unemployment after the boom of the Trente Glorieuses (1945-1975) or even the crisis that arose in 2008 following the subprime mortgage crisis made it essential for a strong State interventionism in housing and construction to be continued. At the start of the 21st century, new challenges arose in connection with sustainable development.

Housing and construction have been enshrined in government action for a long time now, as well as in official statistics. This article will give a comprehensive picture of the various observation tools used by the Official Statistical System in this area, each of which uses a specific focal range. These mechanisms involves INSEE, the SDES but also the French network of notaries and are based on statistical surveys and administrative data. The depth of the French system will ensure that short and medium-term developments are not ignored. As well as modernising its traditional tools used for economic and social themes, official statistics must now inform the debate on controlling land take, upgrading energy efficiency in buildings and regulating the housing supply on the basis of demand. It must also meet a very high demand for localized data from sector stakeholders and the general public.

Providing a complete statistical view of the housing sector is far from an easy task. The concept of the building covers a broad area, marked in both time and space by a very wide range of states, physical situations or conditions of occupancy (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Residential Property in All its States

The story of a building, whatever its first usage, whether for habitation or non-residential purposes, generally starts with the acquisition, either at cost or free of charge, of an undeveloped parcel of land. The area of that parcel, its geographical location and its positioning in terms of other built-up areas or transport networks are the factors that determine its purchase price: this represents a non-negotiable part of the total cost of a property construction project (nearly a third in the case of a detached house).

The act of construction, as well as that of extending or transforming a building, is subject to strict regulations in France, in terms of general principles, such as land-use planning or housing codes, or specific rules, such as regional consistency schemes or local development plans. Before any project can be launched, the construction project owner, a natural or legal entity known as the “petitioner”, must submit an application for construction approval from the municipality council. The council delegates this to a planning office, which issues its decision. This stage is important, as it is most often the precursor to the actual start of construction, known as the “project launch”.

Although there may be exceptions, a project involving several dwellings (a multiple dwelling or a group of detached houses) is, in the majority of cases, led by a public or private legal entity (social landlord or property developer). The corresponding dwellings are sold at various degrees of maturity, from off-plan reservation to purchase once completed and connected to the energy networks. From the moment the first occupant takes up residence, the building loses its status as “new housing”. It is from this moment on that the dwelling is subject to all manner of successive events.

Owners may occupy their buildings, and are known as “mortgagors” where they are still paying off their home loan. Not all occupants own the property they occupy: a not insignificant proportion of these are renters (Box 1) paying rent to a private-sector landlord in the case of private housing or a social landlord in the case of low-rent and rent-controlled housing.

A building is a durable good. However, there will come a time during its “life cycle”, when, for physical or regulatory reasons, it will need to be renovated. This involves seeking to improve its energy performance, its physical characteristics (for health reasons) or its functionalities, for example to adapt it for senior citizens or for people with a physical disability.

The ways in which a given building is used are not fixed over time. Indeed, many liberal professions are conducted in apartments that were originally intended for residential purposes. Conversely, the housing aspirations of some households lead them to undertake projects to convert factory premises into light and spacious apartments.

In the same vein, housing may be occupied in different ways. Although the majority of the current housing stock is occupied as a main residence, there is a proportion identified as vacant. Other housing accommodates occupants on a more occasional basis or as second homes.

To echo the multiplicity of statuses that a potentially residential building may have, statistical observations of housing are likewise in no way limited to the idea of dwelling. Over their recent history, French official statistics (specifically INSEE and SDES) have progressively developed an information system that allows them to develop points of view that are necessarily different but complementary.

The availability of land for building is a necessary condition for new construction. The land and building price survey (EPTB) is an exhaustive statistical survey carried out on a monthly basis among petitioning households. The survey collects information on land intended for construction of detached houses: way of acquisition, area, date of purchase, price. Questions are also asked regarding the house itself: provisional price, degree of works completion and their coordinator, as well as future thermal performance. Finally, the survey also looks into the characteristics of the holder of the building permit: their socio-professional category, age, size of household, status as first-time buyer, etc.

The EPTB is the only source providing information on land prices and their relationship with the prices of the houses built on that land. Notarial sources can shed some light on the other land transactions, but the data they contain are sometimes patchy, not available until a later date and contain no information on the construction project itself. As a result, the French statistical system does not gather comprehensive records of land transfers prior to the construction of apartment buildings.

Since 1972, the French government has maintained a register of land-use planning applications, now called Sit@del. The aim of this system is not limited just to the production of official statistics, it is also used to conduct checks, determine land-use taxes, monitor changes to built properties as part of the direct local tax base or to monitor specific public policies based on new construction. Sit@del is, however, managed by the ministerial statistical department responsible for housing (SDES).

A very large proportion of the data that populate Sit@del come from residential or other-use building permit forms: in principle, this means they are exhaustive and may relate to housing and business uses. Any project for a new building or the transformation of an existing building requires the submission of a building permit application to the council of the municipality in which the land is located; the petitioner fills in an application form, which is processed by the planning departments (state, local authority) under which the municipality falls. Once approval has been granted, the petitioner may either begin the work and declare their site open, or abandon their project and request cancellation. The completion of the works is reported via a specific declaration, which is used to verify compliance with the initial plan. Although they are not very frequent, refusal by the municipality or cancellation (after approval) of a building permit application are not rare events. Furthermore, the economic forecaster, the new construction professionals or even the national decision-makers closely follow the number of cancellations by the petitioner so as to gather information on the “climate” in the construction sector.

Movements in terms of the life cycle of the permit (submissions, approvals, cancellations, amendments, project launches, completions and compliance of works) are used for statistical purposes. The SDES receives approximately 200,000 declarations each month. Approvals are sent by the planning department within six months of being issued. Declarations regarding project launches or completion and compliance of works are made by the petitioners; these reports are usually made much later, usually taking place within 18 months of site opening, although after 12 months, 30% of the information regarding the housing started is still unavailable.

The economic environment surrounding the construction of new housing is analysed using live estimates broken down by geographic level. The corresponding statistical series are used for tracing purposes from the month following the approvals and project launches. These series are mostly formed of collected data, with estimates for the information not reported. They are updated monthly to incorporate any new information.

In parallel, the survey on the marketing of new housing (ECLN) is a large-scale survey conducted each quarter by telephone among property developers and used to monitor sector activity. The ECLN provides information on the volumes of properties put up for sale and reservations made, the reservation prices, stocks available for sale and their clearance time frame. The survey is exhaustive within its field, i.e. projects involving more than five dwellings, detached houses on grouped permits or multiple dwellings.

Sit@del and ECLN both make it possible to reliably monitor the construction flows for new houses and their marketing, whoever the purchasers may be (private individuals, investors, social landlords).

Against the backdrop of a general increase in the French population, assessing the housing capacity means at least being able to count the number of both new and second-hand dwellings built across the country. How many dwellings are there in France? Of those, how many are occupied? To answer these fundamental questions, the annual estimates for the housing stock summarise and align several statistical sources, the main one currently being the population census.

In Metropolitan France, the estimate also uses other sources (see below): housing tax registers, the register of localized buildings (RIL) and the Housing statistical survey (ENL), etc. For the overseas departments and regions, the estimate is mainly created using the population census and the 2006 and 2013 housing surveys.

The estimate uses information from the source deemed the most relevant and accurate and is an exercise in aligning all the sources used. It is carried out in several stages, in line with a compilation protocol similar to that used for the national accounts. The data given for the last three years are provisional: they are then revised year by year, until the final figures have been established using the compilation of the annual census surveys.

The estimate establishes a total number of dwellings, which can be broken down by category (main, secondary, occasional or vacant residences), by housing type (multiple or individual housing), by tenure status (owners, private- or public-sector renters, other) and by urban unit division (rural or urban). This estimate exercise is essential, in particular because it provides information for the housing satellite account, which is an important component of the national accounts (see below). Numerous surveys carried out by the Official Statistical System use the housing stock estimate, such that the surveys produced by the official statistics departments are consistent in terms of the number of dwellings for a given reference period.

The population census is used to determine the legal population of each municipality in France and also provides information on the characteristics of those populations: age, profession, means of transport used, housing conditions, etc. By providing a better understanding of the population and how it changes, the census can, for example, be used to quantify housing needs and therefore constitutes a central tool in land-use planning. It also helps to characterise the housing identified in the census according to several criteria: housing category, type of building (single/grouped-residence building, building used for purposes other than habitation, etc.), housing type, construction completion period, size, lift service, tenure status, time since occupants moved in.

The Housing survey (ENL) is a large statistical survey conducted among households and used to address the issue of housing in France. It is the sole source that is sufficiently detailed to break down main residences by sector and housing type. This means that knowledge of a key statistic, such as the rate of main residence ownership, is largely based on the information collected in the ENL.

The social component of the housing stock is also monitored very closely via the register of social landlord rental housing (RPLS). Introduced to replace a mechanism for collecting aggregated data from a limited number of social landlords, the RPLS was set up in 2011 and covers a wider scope: the data collected, dwelling by dwelling, give a clear view of the structure of the social rental stock in France as of 1 January, as well as any changes that have taken place over the previous year (new buildings, renovations, transfers, etc.). The organisations surveyed report on all housing that they own in full or for which they have a long-term lease, for construction or renovation, or over which they have a usufruct, whether or not these grant their occupants a right to receive individualised housing assistance (APL).

Furthermore, the administrative, and in particular fiscal sources constitute vital elements in estimating the housing stock in France due to their exhaustive nature and the quality of the information they provide. They are a good source of dense and accurate information on the characteristics of housing and the occupants.

Historically, the Filocom file, produced under the direction of the ministerial statistical department responsible for housing, fulfilled this role, enabling a number of analyses to be conducted at both national and local level. Since 2016, INSEE has been disseminating the fiscal demographic file on housing and people (Fidéli), which aims to align the large fiscal sources of information on housing and people. Fidéli can be considered as a reliable and complete statistical register bringing together information on housing and occupants; it supplies numerous key points of the French statistical information system: sampling frame for household surveys, source for the Permanent Demographic Sample or the residential mobility indicators, etc.

Once we have established a complete picture of the housing stock in France, we will then look to understand, in detail, the mechanism through which households acquire their dwellings. The house price dynamics are a crucial aspect here.

Housing has the peculiarity of being both a consumer good and, for households who own their dwelling, a component part of their wealth (Trannoy, 2018). The house price level not only provides insight into the dynamism or tensions on the property market, it also has an impact on access to property and potentially on rent levels. Property prices are therefore closely monitored in public debate, while efforts are also made to increase the number of sources and concepts: provisional price (EPTB), reservation price (ECLN), implementation price, transaction price, etc. The statistics produced are designed to map changes in prices for housing of comparable quality, rather than their price level.

The Sit@del register does not contain any information on the price of a property project as this is not specified in the regulation that define its content. The almost exclusive objective of the Survey on the cost price of new housing (PRLN) is to make the construction cost index (ICC) possible to be compiled. Although established through usage, the name of this index is unsuitable as it is in fact a production price index. It is based on observing contracts concluded between project owners and construction companies, and excludes any other housing cost price components (land, ancillary promotional costs, financial expenses, etc.). The cost of the construction itself is calculated using other indicators, specifically the “BT” building indices used to revise construction contract prices.

The construction cost index is used in numerous ways: to compile the commercial rent index, to index commercial leases, to monitor price changes in the construction sector. This index is also of crucial importance for national accountants as a deflator used to assess construction activity, to measure the quality effect when estimating the growth in the volume of GFCF in housing (housing satellite account) or even to draw up balance sheets.

The PRLN survey gathers technical and financial information on signed contracts: built area, nature of construction contract, contract dates, quote and works, and any price indexing. It also aims to describe, in as much detail as possible, the services provided under the contracts and their associated prices. The survey also provides information on the form and number of habitable levels in the building, the type of heating (energy source, heat emitter and producer, distribution system) and the associated labels. For the latter, it is used for specific statistics on household energy consumption drawn up by the French Centre for Economic Studies and Research into Energy (CEREN).

The French Office of Notaries draws up databases as part of its public service mission. These databases are populated with very timely and detailed descriptive information regarding property transactions: quarterly reporting on the amount of the transactions as well as the characteristics of the goods, making it possible to compile the Notaires-INSEE price index for second-hand dwellings (Figure 2).

The hedonic pricing model was developed jointly by INSEE and the statisticians from the office of notaries as part of a scientific committee. Its specific aim is to take account of the heterogeneity of the goods traded and to neutralise the changes associated with differences in the structure of the trades.

The main weakness in the notarial source is the relatively poor coverage rate, due to the fact that not all transactions are, in practice, reported to the notarial statistical offices, especially in rural areas.

There are also other sources, which are similar in nature but almost exhaustive, that provide information on all the property transactions recorded in France over the last five years. The Request for Land Values (DVF) produced by the Directorate-General of Public Finance (DGFiP) describe the property transactions that have taken place over the last five years. The data contained in these requests are taken from the notarial deeds and land register information and are the result of the collection of taxes on fee-based transfers; free transfers are therefore excluded. These data have been accessible to the general public as open data since April 2019. They can be used, for example, to confirm the estimated transaction volumes each quarter using the notarial data combined with the tax collection aggregates reported by the DGFiP. Although exhaustive in theory, these are often reported at a later date than the notarial sources and, apart from the additional benefit they provide through the fiscal data on the buildings, they give only a very incomplete description of the goods traded. There is a legitimate interest in this source from services producing information on the property market; from the perspective of the Official Statistical System, while the requests for land values can be used to describe the transaction volumes, the reliability of the amounts of these transactions still needs to be assessed.

The residential property price is an essential piece of information for analysis, not only because it summarises a number of macroeconomic factors (including at local level), but also because it is closely linked to a major social challenge: access to housing. For example, the price of housing has a direct impact on the budget of households with mortgages, as well as on that of renters, as their rents, although largely regulated in France, are correlated with the prices of new and second-hand dwellings.

Figure 2. Two Parallel systems for describing the sale price of second-hand dwellings

Generally speaking, the cost of housing is a fundamental piece of information for evaluating the living conditions of French households. Correctly measuring the rents that renters must pay is essential when looking at household budgets.

To do this, we identify two large categories of housing landlords: social landlords, who rent out housing under regulated conditions, especially in terms of rents (see the RPLS above), and the others who, in general, charge market rents. For this, INSEE uses two quarterly statistical surveys to measure the evolution of rents (and not their levels) over time in the public and private sectors.

The Rents and Charges Survey gathers information for five consecutive quarters from a sample of dwellings in the private stock that may be rented unfurnished. Using a similar principle to that of the French Labour Force Survey, households are interviewed face-to-face in the first and last of these quarters, and over the phone in the quarters in between. The sample, involving some 3000 dwellings, is renewed using the rotating panel principle.

In the outlook survey on the rents of the social sector (ELBS), a sample of social landlords are asked to provide information, every quarter, on changes in rents for a sample of dwellings selected in the RPLS (see above). The sample is renewed every five years.

As part of its public service mission, the National Agency for Housing Information (ANIL) processes the data on rents in the private sector collected by approved local observatories and, as of 2019, makes them available to the SDES on an annual basis.

Other INSEE household surveys are used to periodically measure the cost of housing: for example, the Housing survey as well as the statistical survey on household income and living conditions (FR-SILC), which addresses this issue from the perspective of poverty in living conditions.

The structural questions associated with housing are answered by the Housing survey, which is the central mechanism used to gain an understanding of housing in France. As mentioned above, this survey helps to count the housing stock and contributes to assessing the cost of housing.

The Housing survey is also used to accurately identify the quality of housing, whether through an objective description or occupant perception, and, for a few years now, has also included environmental concerns.

The Housing survey has a long history: since it was first conducted in 1955, the questionnaire has evolved quite a bit. As data has been collected over this period of time, it is therefore possible to create an overview of the developments in housing conditions in France and to note the long-term trends in terms of improvements in habitat quality.

The survey is part of INSEE’s tradition of large-scale statistical household surveys, with a very detailed questionnaire addressing the physical characteristics of housing, the quality of housing and of the environment, tenure status, difficulties in accessing housing, questions of residential mobility, etc. The questionnaire is long, with face-to-face interviews in the interviewees’ houses often lasting over an hour.

Unlike many other surveys conducted for French Official Statistics, the Housing survey is not based on any European statistical regulation. There has therefore not been any work undertaken in terms of standardisation or coordination between the Member States, as equivalents are few. Only the United Kingdom (via its Housing Survey) and the Netherlands (with the WoON) conduct household surveys similar to the French survey. Generally speaking, and especially for information on housing conditions seen from the perspective of hardships, the European reference source comes through the EU-SILC instrument: the data on housing collected here are used to inform indicators of material poverty. The size of the SILC sample cannot, however, be compared with that of the Housing survey, and does not offer many possibilities for conducting analyses by sub-population groups.

In recent years, the workload of INSEE’s interviewer network has gradually led the Official Statistical System to adjust the frequency of the Housing survey, which, until the 2006 edition, was around five years. The following editions were conducted in 2013 and 2020, on top of which, the scope of the latter was limited to Metropolitan France.

The next editions are set to break with the exclusivity of conducting the survey face-to-face so as to pave the way for INSEE to collect data through multiple channels (internet, phone, and finally face-to-face). In addition to integrating a standardised offer of technical services, the persons responsible for the Housing survey will also need to tackle new challenges, in terms of the methodology used to gather data (ensuring the long questionnaire is intelligible and suitable when conducted over the internet and phone) and in terms of the methodology used for statistical processing (correcting the effects of the method of collection, so as to calculate the indicators traditionally derived from the Housing survey without breaks in the series). This transition to multimodal data collection is an opportunity for the Housing survey, in that it should make it possible to gather information from population groups that have been traditionally difficult to reach face-to-face.

Furthermore, using alternative data sources should make it possible to shorten the questionnaire. From this perspective, the Dutch housing survey gives indications of the way forward: it saves households from having to answer questions on their energy consumption by using data held by energy suppliers.

All the sources of statistical information on housing and construction presented above are governed by a dissemination policy that has now become the standard within the Official Statistical System: online uploading (under embargo if applicable) of time series, quarterly notes on the economic situation, medium for initial valuation of new data, standard tables, high added value analysis, etc. Some data producers have even developed specific tools for visualising or mapping data to promote the appropriation of key indicators by the users. The provision of individual data to researchers and the academic world is also favoured by INSEE, SDES and, for several years now, even by the ministerial statistical department of the tax authorities, via the Secure Data Access Centre (CASD).

Given the weight of housing within the French economy, the users of the information produced by the Official Statistical System show a strong need for the availability of macroeconomic reference indicators. One of the solutions to this request is the creation of what is known as a “satellite account”. This is a “framework for presenting economic data for a specific area in relation to the overall economic analysis of the central framework of the national accounts”. This includes, for example, tourism, education, health, environment or even housing.

More specifically, the task of the Housing satellite account (CSL) is to specify total household expenditure each year, both in terms of regular expenditure and investment, and to calculate the weight of housing within the French economy. The elements published, generally during the summer following the previous year under review, also contain figures for the property activities as well as various forms of housing assistance (welfare benefits, assistance for production or for the owner). Finally, the annual estimates of the housing stock (see above) are also recalled and broken down by the tenure status.

The creation of the Housing satellite account is not merely a technical task involving calculation and the drawing up of the report, it also involves a broad consultation of the various public and private stakeholders in housing and construction, both within and outside of the Official Statistics System. This consultation, which generally takes the form of an annual technical conference (which has been known as the “housing commission” for a long time), makes it easier to share the messages and indicators associated with the Housing satellite account within French society, including within the media.

Another example of a synthetic indicator, the housing price indices, which measure the change in prices of housing transactions carried out by households, and which are reported to Eurostat in line with the methods set out in the European regulations, incorporate both data from the ECLN and from notarial sources, which provide the prices for these transactions for newly built and second-hand dwellings, respectively.

However, the data produced by the statistical system for housing have a much broader use.

Spending associated with housing, in particular rents, are included in household consumption and therefore contribute to the assessment of household purchasing power. In this way, the rent figures are integrated into the Consumer Price Index (CPI). These data are also used for the harmonised index of consumer prices (HICP) defined at European level, for which Eurostat aggregates the data from each Member State. Furthermore, Eurostat has also defined other indices in order to take into account the fact that owners implicitly engage in housing spending by living in their dwellings: this index is known as the Owner-Occupied Housing Price Index (OOH). The OOH is used to supplement the measurement provided by the HICP regarding the significance of housing expenditure in total consumption and to take into consideration owners who occupy their housing.

The digital era is bearing witness to the emergence of more detailed and more complete data on housing. This gives us an opportunity to improve the way we measure some phenomena, in particular those for which the associated concepts are directly quantifiable at the level of housing: energy and water consumption, prices and rents, etc. Here are some examples:

Shedding light on housing conditions and residential mobility, especially at local level, requires continuous research into alternative sources: from this perspective, Fidéli makes it possible to supplement the population census data, in particular for regions identified as experiencing market tensions. Fidéli can be used to monitor housing and its occupants over two successive years and to analyse residential migrations more closely.

This same source can also be used to investigate issues associated with housing conditions, an area in which, in the same way as employment or income, there is a growing need for fine analyses at local level.

However, the use of administrative sources for statistical purposes is limited to purely regulatory information, which rarely aligns with the concepts that are of interest from a statistical perspective. In particular, while there is a strong need for localised statistics in terms of inadequate housing (Join-Lambert, Labarthe, Marpsat and Rougerie, 2011; Benvéniste and Calame, 1996), the contribution made by administrative data such as Fidéli is still restricted by the difficulty in gaining a full understanding of the concept from the variables available (Box 2), both at national and local level.

Finally, the analysis of housing (and the property market in particular) at local level requires the development of a set of local zoning. This work has been carried out by the SDES in its “maille habitat” [housing grid], which groups together the municipalities that are most similar in terms of housing, under contiguity constraint. This grid highlights the disparities at local level, and can be used to characterise the regions in terms of difficulties in accessing housing and attractiveness. It is, in itself, an easy-to-use joint and shared evaluation grid. Promoting and pushing forward the methodological work are key factors in establishing greater regionalisation of statistics on housing.

Today, French official statistics still need to take into account the emergence of new challenges linked to sustainable development: combating global warming, supporting low-income households in the energy transition, controlling land take.

In 2012, the statistical department for the ministries of housing and ecology conducted the survey on the performance of housing and environment, facilities, and energy needs and usage (known as the Phébus survey) in order to provide a picture of the energy performance of the main residence stock and to analyse this on the basis of the characteristics of the occupant households, their household goods and cars, and their energy behaviour and usage. The Phébus survey also made it possible to study the issue of energy poverty.

Over the last few years, global warming has become (and probably consolidated its position as) one of the main day-to-day concerns of the French society. The Survey on energy renovation works for detached houses (the Trémi survey), conducted in 2020 under the joint direction of SDES and ADEME, will soon provide information on the renovation works completed in 2019 in the detached residential housing stock (cost, duration of works, the way they were implemented and the method of financing, etc.) and on assessing their level of energy performance. It will also enable the public authorities to identify the household drivers and obstacles in terms of implementing works of this kind (motivations, triggers, etc.), to measure the notoriety and uptake of the renovation assistance mechanisms on the basis of the characteristics of the housing and the reference person within the occupant household.

The mechanism is set to be extended to cover multiple dwellings (and will be known as the Tréco survey) over the coming years, although this is not without delicate methodological difficulties: specific renovation dynamics, distinction between works carried out by private parties and the common party, access to adequate information regarding joint ownerships, etc.

There will also be an intensification in the use of data from administrative or fiscal sources (tax credit for the energy transition, white certificates, etc.). However, on the one hand, this raises difficult questions of removing duplications of households accumulating in the public support mechanisms, due to the lack of an inter-administrative identifier for the dwelling or building. On the other hand, this requires knowledge of how to convert acts of renovation into quantities of energy actually saved.

The consequence of building housing or buildings for non-residential use is the development of land, rendering it impermeable, where such land was, at some point in the past, used for agricultural purposes. This act is rarely reversible and constitutes a long-term commitment by the community authorising the development: connection to water, gas, electricity or even district heating networks, internet or fibre optic network, public transport services, construction of new public or private facilities, etc. The strategic plan laid down in July 2018 on biodiversity aims to stem the increase in areas used for buildings, transport infrastructure, car parks, etc. and to reach a net zero land take objective by 2050.

Today, land take is still a poorly defined concept. Under the direction of the French Ministry for Ecological and Inclusive Transition, statisticians, geographers and data analysts have been tasked with conducting studies and experiments to produce indicators based on information from the Official Statistical System (new buildings, Teruti-Lucas, etc.) and satellite indicators. There still seems to be a long way to go before the parties involved in the public debate will have access to the reference data on land take needed to reach a consensus on methodology.