Permanent database of facilities 

BPE

The permanent database of facilities (BPE) is a statistical database. It lists a wide range of facilities and services, whether commercial or not, accessible to the public throughout France on the first January of each year.

In 2025, it covers 235 different types of services and facilities, divided into seven main categories : services for individuals, retail, education, health and social services, transport and travel, sport, leisure and culture, and tourism.

The BPE is compiled on various administrative sources. It collects data on access points to services or facilities intended for the public, located at detailed geographical levels : municipalities, sub-municipal areas (Iris) and coordinates (x,y).

Thanks to the detailed knowledge of territories it provides, BPE is a key decision-making tool. In particular, it enables the structure of service provision within a territory to be analysed: volume of facilities, presence or absence, concentration or dispersion, identification of service hubs or service-deprived areas, calculation of distances between equipped and unequipped zones, calculation of facility coverage rates by comparing facilities with their potential users, creation of facility portfolios based on a specific theme, etc.

The BPE also provides a framework for analysing regions by grouping certain types of facilities into sets called ranges : these ranges bring together facilities that present similar logics of implantation, in the sense that they are frequently present in the same municipalities. These groupings make it possible to develop synthetic indicators reflecting the hierarchical organization of the territories in terms of services to the population.

Data on the BPE are published on a rolling basis across the entire country, they cover a selected number of facilities and two time periods separated by five or ten years: 2020–2025 and 2015–2025.

The permanent database of facilities replaces the municipal inventory, the last of which was conducted in 1998. Its first release covers data from 2007. This data is updated annually, rather than every 8 to 10 years as was the case with the municipal inventory. In addition, the BPE lists a wider variety of facilities (235 in 2025 instead of 36 in 1998); their locations are also specified in greater detail, using the Iris system or even coordinates (x,y).

It covers French territory, that is, mainland France and the five overseas departments and regions (DROM). Most sources include the DROMs—excluding Mayotte—starting in 2005, and Mayotte starting in 2012.

Since 2018, an updated database covering a five-year period has been released annually. it covers a selected number of equipment types., which are selected each year based on expert assessment. Starting in 2025, this annual release will be expanded to include a new database covering a ten-year period.

The 2022 Permanent Equipment Database was not released due to an overhaul of the processing workflow.

Municipality Inventory

Administrative data

Annual