Houseboat and caravan dwellers form part of our local housing market.

This dataset aims to bring together some information to help us see the scale of the issue in our local area. This includes

• Cambridge
• East Cambridgeshire
• Fenland
• Huntingdonshire
• South Cambridgeshire
• Forest Heath
• St Edmundsbury
• Peterborough

This data is simply a starting point, being launched in April 2017, and at this stage is looking to bring existing data together to shed some light on the scale of this part of our housing market.
There are two source of data:

1. Council Tax records identifying the number of houseboat dwellers in 2015 and 2016. The government data is published in response to an external request for information seeking a record of the number of households who are boat dwellers in each local authority in England. They note that: "Caseworkers use Dwelling Type “TH” and Dwelling Group “72” when they identify a houseboat, captured as part of the property attributes on the VOA administrative database. Total counts for each local authority district in England are provided. Counts are rounded to the nearest 10. However, counts of zero are reported as “0” and counts between one and four (inclusive) are reported as negligible and denoted by “-“. Totals may not sum due to rounding." As the figures are rounded to the nearest 10, we can see this only gives an indication of the number of houseboats in each local authority area; in addition, a local correspondent informs us that this is "not an accurate way of calculating the numbers of houseboats since houseboats are not liable to pay council tax if the land they are moored on is not a hereditment".
2. A web search for local marinas and moorings in the local area, undertaken in April 2017.

We are very pleased to have now uploaded geo-coded data on the location of some of the marinas and moorings across the area in 2017, which has enabled us to produce a local map. We continue to seek new and improved sources of data, and updates to the goverment figures, as time progresses.