Barriers to housing and services across London neighbourhoods

Last updated: February 2025
Next update: January 2026 (TBC)

What does this indicator show?

This indicator shows the barriers to housing and services experienced in London’s neighbourhoods. 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 which areas of London face the most barriers to housing and services. 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. Many East London neighbourhoods, for example almost the entirety of the boroughs of Newham and Barking & Dagenham, face the most severe barriers.

There are also large pockets facing the most severe barriers to housing and services in Brent, as well as in some parts of the outer reaches of London - including several neighbourhoods in Enfield in the North and Bromley in the South.

By contrast, areas of South West London - such as Richmond, Merton and Sutton - have the least severe barriers to services and housing, along with most of Camden and Westminster.