Tenure by number of rooms
There is evidence of people incorrectly identifying their type of landlord as ”Council or local authority” or “Housing association”. You should add these two categories together when analysing data that uses this variable.
Read more about this quality notice.
It is inappropriate to measure change in number of rooms from 2011 to 2021, as Census 2021 used Valuation Office Agency data for this variable. Instead use Census 2021 estimates for number of bedrooms for comparisons over time.
Read more about this quality notice.
Summary
This dataset provides Census 2021 estimates that classify households in England and Wales by tenure and by number of rooms. The estimates are as at Census Day, 21 March 2021.
Variable and dataset information
Area type
Census 2021 statistics are published for a number of different geographies. These can be large, for example the whole of England, or small, for example an output area (OA), the lowest level of geography for which statistics are produced.
For higher levels of geography, more detailed statistics can be produced. When a lower level of geography is used, such as output areas (which have a minimum of 100 persons), the statistics produced have less detail. This is to protect the confidentiality of people and ensure that individuals or their characteristics cannot be identified.
Lower tier local authorities
Lower tier local authorities provide a range of local services. There are 309 lower tier local authorities in England made up of 181 non-metropolitan districts, 59 unitary authorities, 36 metropolitan districts and 33 London boroughs (including City of London). In Wales there are 22 local authorities made up of 22 unitary authorities.
Coverage
Census 2021 statistics are published for the whole of England and Wales. However, you can choose to filter areas by:
- country - for example, Wales
- region - for example, London
- local authority - for example, Cornwall
- health area – for example, Clinical Commissioning Group
- statistical area - for example, MSOA or LSOA
Tenure of household
Whether a household owns or rents the accommodation that it occupies.
Owner-occupied accommodation can be:
* owned outright, which is where the household owns all of the accommodation
* with a mortgage or loan
* part-owned on a shared ownership scheme
Rented accommodation can be:
* private rented, for example, rented through a private landlord or letting agent
* social rented through a local council or housing association
This information is not available for household spaces with no usual residents.
Number of rooms (Valuation Office Agency)
A room can be any room in a dwelling apart from bathrooms, toilets, halls or landings, kitchens, conservatories or utility rooms. All other rooms, for example, living rooms, studies, bedrooms, separate dining rooms and rooms that can only be used for storage are included. If two rooms have been converted into one, they are counted as one room.
The number of rooms is recorded by address, this means that for households living in a shared dwelling the number of rooms are counted for the whole dwelling and not the individual household.
This definition is based on the Valuation Office Agency’s (VOA) definition.
Variables
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Protecting personal data
Sometimes we need to make changes to data if it is possible to identify individuals. This is known as statistical disclosure control.
In Census 2021, we:
- swapped records (targeted record swapping), for example, if a household was likely to be identified in datasets because it has unusual characteristics, we swapped the record with a similar one from a nearby small area (very unusual households could be swapped with one in a nearby local authority)
- added small changes to some counts (cell key perturbation), for example, we might change a count of four to a three or a five – this might make small differences between tables depending on how the data are broken down when we applied perturbation
Read more in Section 5 of our article Design for Census 2021.
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