Occupancy rating for bedrooms
Summary
This dataset provides Census 2021 estimates that classify households in England and Wales by occupancy rating based on the number of bedrooms in the household. 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. In England there are 309 lower tier local authorities. These are made up of non-metropolitan districts (181), unitary authorities (59), metropolitan districts (36) and London boroughs (33, including City of London). In Wales there are 22 local authorities made up of 22 unitary authorities. Of these local authority types, only non-metropolitan districts are not additionally classified as upper tier local 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
Occupancy rating for bedrooms
Whether a household's accommodation is overcrowded, ideally occupied or under-occupied. This is calculated by comparing the number of bedrooms the household requires to the number of available bedrooms.
The number of bedrooms the household requires is calculated according to the Bedroom Standard, where the following should have their own bedroom:
1. married or cohabiting couple
2. single parent
3. person aged 16 years and over
4. pair of same-sex persons aged 10 to 15 years
5. person aged 10 to 15 years paired with a person under 10 years of the same sex
6. pair of children aged under 10 years, regardless of their sex
7. person aged under 16 years who cannot share a bedroom with someone in 4, 5 or 6 above
An occupancy rating of:
* -1 or less implies that a household’s accommodation has fewer bedrooms than required (overcrowded)
* +1 or more implies that a household’s accommodation has more bedrooms than required (under-occupied)
* 0 suggests that a household’s accommodation has an ideal number of bedrooms
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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