FOI Ref: FOI/2021/3060
You asked
Please supply a dataset of number of households, number of rooms and number of bedrooms by output area and housing type (e.g. detached, semi-detached, flat, etc.) for the whole of England. If this is available for 2021 census, that would be preferred, but if not, please supply the most recent full dataset you have.
We said
Thank you for your request.
No estimates are available yet from the 2021 England and Wales Census. The official release page explains that the outputs you require would be available in phase 2, which will only begin after the phase 1 outputs are complete. To find out more about our Census 2021 outputs release plans, email us at census.outputs@ons.gov.uk.
As such, the information you have requested for the Census 2021 is considered exempt under Section 22(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, whereby information is exempt from release if there is a view to publish the information in the future. As a central government department and producer of official statistics, we need to have the freedom to be able to determine our own publication timetables. This is to allow us to deal with the necessary preparation, administration and context of publications. It would be unreasonable to consider disclosure when to do so would undermine our functions.
This exemption is subject to a public interest test. We recognise the desirability of information being freely available and this is considered by ONS when publication schedules are set in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics. The need for timely data must be balanced against the practicalities of applying statistical skill and judgement to produce the high quality, assured data needed to inform decision-making. If this balance is incorrectly applied, then we run the risk of decisions being based on inaccurate data which is arguably not in the public interest. This will have an impact on public trust in official statistics in a time when accuracy of official statistics is more important to the public than ever before.
However, data from the 2011 Census is publicly available online and can be found here. In particular, the following datasets should be of use:
In all cases, the data can either be viewed in browser or downloaded as a .csv file from the options on the left of the page. The option to break the data down by output area can be found in the "Type of area" drop-down box on the bottom-left of the page.
There is not a dataset for the number of rooms by accommodation type, but this can be requested from the census customer services team via census.customerservices@ons.gov.uk.
There are alternative approaches to measuring rooms and bedrooms from administrative data supplied by the Valuation Office Agency (VOA). However, these are published as research outputs and are not available at local authority level and below.
Some data on household numbers are available for different geographies that you might wish to use to update the 2011 Census output area data. Table 3 of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy's Sub-Regional Fuel Poverty release provides numbers of households by Lower-layer super output area (LSOA) for 2018.
Alternatively our Families and Households release is the official estimate for numbers of households, and is available up to 2020, but only goes down to regional level, reflecting the fact it uses social survey data.