Proportion of households in London that are overcrowded by tenure (2007/08 - 2019/20)
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, 9.2% of households in London are overcrowded.
Within this, social rented housing has the highest proportion of households in overcrowded conditions, with 16.8% overcrowded. This contrasts with just 2.4% of owner-occupied households. At the same time, 15.1% of private rented households are overcrowded.
Although there is variation by tenure type, overcrowding overall has increased in London over time, with 9.2% of households overcrowded in 2019/20 compared to 6.8% in 2007/08. This is a trend that started in 2016/17 and is driven primarily by overcrowding in the social and private rented sectors.