Barriers to housing and services across London neighbourhoods

Last updated: December 2025
Next update: TBC

What does this indicator show?

This indicator ranks London’s neighbourhoods according its barriers to housing and services. We can use it to see which areas of London face the most barriers to housing and services

It uses the English Indices of Deprivation, which gives each neighbourhood an overall deprivation score. It does this by combining data from seven areas known as domains, one of which is ‘Barriers to Housing & Services’ which relates both to the physical proximity of local services, as well as ‘wider barriers’ which includes issues relating to access to housing such as affordability and homelessness.

For this indicator, we have excluded all non-London neighbourhoods and divided them into five equal groups - known as quintiles. This allows us to quickly see how barriers to housing and services map across London. Darker neighbourhoods face the most barriers, lighter neighbourhoods the least.

What does it tell us?

There are clear areas of London that experience more barriers to housing and services. Large areas of North West London - including large parts of Hillingdon, Ealing and Brent - have the most severe barriers.

This contrasts strongly with boroughs just across the river Thames, like Richmond, Merton and Kingston, which have the least severe barriers to services and housing.

There are also large pockets facing the most severe barriers to housing and services across North and East London, including most of Newham and parts of Hackney, Waltham Forest and Enfield.

This indicator is part of our work to map deprivation across London, using the English Index of Multiple Deprivation. Explore all of our IMD maps.