Semi-detached homes in the UK between 1970 and 1990

FOI reference: FOI-2024-1844

You asked

Would you be able to supply me with the following information for UK homes between 1970 and 1990:

1. The average house size of semidetached houses in the UK.
2. The room types and their average dimensions across the semidetached properties.
3. The average number of bedrooms for the semidetached properties.

Also, could I please request some additional information below specific to microbore pipework?

• What is the typical layout of microbore pipework in a semidetached house? (e.g., whole house fitted with microbore, partially fitted with microbore, where etc.)
• What is the most common diameter of microbore pipework encountered in domestic heating systems? (e.g., 10mm, 12mm, etc.)
• What is the most common material used for microbore pipes? (e.g., PEX, copper, etc.)

We said

Thank you for your enquiry about UK homes between 1970 and 1990. 

At ONS, we publish Census data which provides information on accommodation type (including semi-detached properties), number of bedrooms, as well as accommodation type by number of bedrooms for England and Wales. This data is all available on our Create a custom dataset tool for 2021, and data available from earlier census are available on the following website: NOMIS.  

NISRA publish census data for Northern Ireland Build or find Census 2021 tables | NISRA Flexible Table Builder and Scottish Census data can be accessed here Home | Scotland's Census (scotlandscensus.gov.uk). These statistics unfortunately do not include house size measures.  

ONS do not publish data on average house size for semi-detached houses in the UK or room types and their dimensions. However, the Valuation Office Agency (VOA) publishes Council Tax: stock of properties statistics which provides data on both property type and number of bedrooms in Table CTSOP 3.0.  

You can access the number of bedrooms data by expanding the dataset with the + buttons at the top of the excel file. This data is available for England and Wales, and covers 1993 to 2023. If you would like to find out more about this data and whether it would be available for earlier time periods, please contact VOA statistics@voa.gov.uk. 

Data on accommodation type is available for Scotland back to 2006, but not by number of bedrooms or floor space. More information may be available by contacting Scottish government on housingstatistics@gov.scot 

Data on accommodation type is also available for Northern Ireland back to 2008, but not by number of bedrooms or floor space. More information may be available by contacting NISRA on LPS.statisticsbranch@finance-ni.gov.uk 

ONS have also explored the feasibility of using data VOA hold on floor space (m2) to create property floor space measures, please see the following link: Admin-based statistics for property floor space, feasibility research: England and Wales. 

Unfortunately, we do not hold data specific to microbore pipework. The Department for Levelling Up, Housing, and Communities (DLUHC) may be better placed to help with this request. They can be contacted at FOI@levellingup.gov.uk.