Proportion of households in London that are overcrowded by tenure (2011/12 - 2020/21)
The extent to which housing in London meets households’ needs can be measured in a range of ways. One of those is to look at overcrowding. Here this is defined using the “bedroom standard”. For example, a home is considered overcrowded if two or more people of a different sex (who are not a couple) over the age of 10 need to sleep in the same room.
On this measure, 8.5% of households in London are overcrowded.
Within this, social rented housing has the highest proportion of households in overcrowded conditions, with 16.6% overcrowded. This contrasts with just 2.1% of owner-occupied households. At the same time, 13.5% of private rented households are overcrowded.
Although there is variation by tenure type, overcrowding overall has remained the same in London over the last 10 years, with 8.5% of households overcrowded in 2020/21 compared to 8.3% in 2011/12. However, social rented households have seen an increase in overcrowding in that same period.