Yesterday, a tweet by house price data firm Acadata appeared to indicate that there was a near total collapse in housing transactions during April.

EYE looked at the dataset and, sure enough, there were just two sales showing for the whole of England and Wales.

We were so astonished by the numbers that we nearly sent out a newsflash to announce that the end of the sales world had happened; but then we thought to have a word with HM Land Registry.

It is a relief to report that despite initial appearances, the sales world did not come to an end in April but of course it certainly did slow down.

HMLR told us:

“The numbers aren’t as extreme as they look.

“The data contained is not as representative as it usually would be, but we’ve made the decision to continue to publish the data to maintain our commitment to transparency and open data.

“During April our casework colleagues needed to deprioritise the activities that enable us to produce the Price Paid dataset in order to focus on delivering our critical services that enable property transactions to continue.

“Therefore the data for April 2020 should be considered as incomplete but will be addressed in future months as the data is updated.

“Although we only recorded 7 sales of property made in April we believe many were not fully captured due to prioritising of services to ensure property transactions could still continue.”

EYE questioned whether HMLR staff had been furloughed and we received this statement:

“Nobody from HM Land Registry has been furloughed.

“We reacted to these challenges by rolling out remote working solutions and prioritising the services that allowed property transactions to continue.

“Since the end of May the vast majority of our staff have been equipped to be able to work from home.”

In April HMLR received 865,970 applications to change or query the Land Register, which may go some way to explaining how they arrived at the decision to deprioritise the updating of some of their published data.