Story · Curiosities map · about 3 min
Homes with a bedroom too few
The census works out how many bedrooms each household is deemed to need, from who lives there and their ages and relationships, and compares that with how many the home has. This story follows the homes that come up at least one bedroom short, from the streets where it is almost unknown to the boroughs where it is one home in five.
Four homes in a hundred
On Census day in March 2021, 4.3% of households in England and Wales had fewer bedrooms than the standard says they need. Wales is half England’s level, 2.2% against 4.4%. Most of the map is pale: in North Kesteven and Rushcliffe it is under one home in a hundred.
East London
London as a whole reads 11.1%, and the east of it far higher. In Newham 22% of homes are at least one bedroom short, in Barking and Dagenham 18% and in Brent 17%. These are places of young families, big households and small flats at once.
Where the landlord is private
Rank every neighbourhood in England and Wales by how much of it rents privately, and the tenth with the most private renting is 8.1% short of a bedroom, against 1.8% in the tenth with the least. That is the private renting layer on screen; both counts come from the same census, on the same neighbourhoods.
Seven times as often
Now England’s 2025 deprivation index, most deprived tenth in dark purple. In that tenth 8.5% of homes are short of a bedroom; in the least deprived tenth 1.1%. That is 7.5 times as often. Only renting from a council or housing association divides the two tenths more sharply, at 40.7% against 3.0%.
Scotland, a year later
Scotland asked the same thing in 2022 and publishes a single "one bedroom short or worse" line. Across the country 2.4% of households fall in it, with Glasgow City highest at 5%. The standard comes from a rule about who needs a room of their own: two young siblings sharing can count as short where nobody who lives there would say so.
For classrooms and curious minds
Questions to talk about, alone or in a group.
- A home can be short of a bedroom because the household grew or because the flat was always small. How would you tell the two apart?
- Overcrowding is seven times as common in the most deprived tenth of neighbourhoods. What would you want to know before calling that a cause?
Try it on the map: Find your own neighbourhood, then turn on private renting beside it and see whether the two move together where you live.
The figures above are calculated from the datasets listed on Data & sources and are approximate: many map layers are modelled or interpolated. Read each layer’s caveats on the map.