Housing Space in England at the Neighbourhood-Level, 1971 to 2017

Abstract

While most discussions of housing in the UK tend to focus on national or regional scales, the level of diversity within regions means that measuring trends at neighbourhood level is vital for a more complete understanding of how housing markets and housing conditions are changing. Using small area data also enables identification of hot spots of changing housing demand as well as charting changes in the composition of housing stock in neighbourhoods. This paper makes use of a new dataset, developed as a part of the PopChange project, which enables analysis of population and housing change using Census data for neighbourhoods across England since 1971. The data reveal considerable neighbourhood-level diversity in trends throughout this period. Notable trends identified include a marked increase in overcrowding in outer London over the period 1971–2011, a decrease in the number of rooms per person across much of the wider south east between 2001 and 2011, and large increases in average household size in parts of London, Birmingham, Bradford, and Oldham. Administrative data for 2015 and 2017 allow a post 2011 Census perspective on the number of dwellings per person. When measured in terms of dwellings per person, housing space increased at regional level over the period everywhere except London, but there is considerable variation and all regions contain neighbourhoods with declining numbers of dwellings per person.