Residential Mobility in London - recent and general trends

These maps of residential mobility, or 'neighbourhood churn', indicate areas that may experience social change or upheaval because of high levels of resident turnover. Such areas typically include student-dominated districts, destinations frequented by recent international migrants or domestic migrants to London and other areas where much of the housing stock is let on short-term contracts.

The two maps show the proportions of properties where data suggest residents have changed at least once during the last decade (2010 to 2020) and in the last five years (2015 to 2020). A roll of household residents at the end of each year is used in these calculations.

The estimates were made by linking lists of names and addresses from administrative and consumer data relating to voter eligibility and purchasing behaviour. Comparison with old census data confirms that they provide very accurate estimates in the early yers of the study period, but lags in record-keeping do mean that they may be less accurate in the most recent years running up to the 2021 Census. The underpinning "linked consumer register" data allow researchers at the Consumer Data Research Centre to explore annual variations in neighbourhood turnover . Crucially they also allow researchers to estimate annual turnover rather than waiting for 10-yearly census data to estimate change (neighbourhood estimates from the 2011 Census are not expected until March 2022). The linkage process includes procedures for plugging data gaps and accommodating other household composition changes, such as marriages, comings of age and household dissolution.

The ten-year map shows an inner/outer London split. Many Inner London boroughs sustain high rates of household turnover, as people move into, within and out of the inner city. Turnover in the suburbs is much lower. Previous Trust for London maps have illustrated how, in recent years, the tendency for households to move out from central to suburban locations within Greater London have been replaced with Inner London residents leapfrogging London’s suburbs in residential moves to more far-flung locations. The boroughs of Kensington & Chelsea and Westminster are exceptions to this pattern, with enduringly low rates of residential turnover. Outer London boroughs retain residential turnover "hotspots" including London migrant destinations and staging posts for moves out of the Capital. The largest of these are Harrow and Croydon. Colindale shows up as an area of high turnover because of the very substantial level of housebuilding that has occurred over the last ten years.

The five-year map (presented using different categories of resident turnovers and shown using a different set of colours) presents a different picture that seems to have emerged over the last five years - while there is still an over-all inner vs outer London difference, differences have also become apparent between the east and west of the city. Large scale urban regeneration projects have resulted in wholesale changes of population in many inner eastern boroughs such as Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Southwark, Lambeth and, most prominently, in the Olympic Park near Stratford, where entire new communities have been created since the 2012 London Olympic Games. Camden, the City and most of Islington have, by contrast, become more settled since the middle of the last decade, as has much of west London. Some outer areas, such as Harrow, Croydon, Hounslow and Romford, have also seen apparent acceleration in rates of population turnover, sustaining a decade long trend.

Source: https://data.cdrc.ac.uk/dataset/cdrc-residential-mobility-index