House share accommodation in the UK

FOI Ref: FOI/2023/4775

You asked

I am requesting information on the following:

I would like information on the number of people in the UK or England that reside in house share accommodation. I want this to include shared houses/ joint tenancies, as well as Houses of Multiple Occupancy (HMOs).

Is there a separate statistic of the number of students residing in shared accommodation?

We said

Thank you for your Freedom of Information (FoI) request relating to shared houses, joint tenancies and Houses of Multiple Occupancy (HMO), including for students.

We have previously published information related to a similar FoI which may be of interest. It was published on 29 November 2022, accessible via the following link: https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/housesofmultipleoccupancyintheuk

Since then, the ONS have started to publish statistics based on the 2021 Census.

The Demography and Migration topic summary included data on the number of usual residents in households or communal establishments (CE) in dataset TS001 - Number of usual residents in households and communal establishments. This doesn't distinguish between type of household (such as HMOs, joint tenancies), or type of CE (such as Hall of residence or care home). Living arrangements data in TS010 only covers relationships within households relating to partnerships (living in a couple or not living in a couple).

The Household composition dataset TS003 gives some insight for this FOI; it differentiates between family based households and 'other' but the detail on 'other' is limited to the following categories:

• Other household types: With dependent children
• Other household types: Other, including all full-time students and all aged 66 years and over

In the Housing topic summary, data were published that count the number of usual residents in households by accommodation type and usual residents in CEs by establishment type. However, the establishment type which might include halls of residence is "Education" which may also include boarding schools. Tenure data includes owned or rented, but not the type of tenancy such as HMO or shared tenancy.

We have provided the following datasets for England and Wales to show what is available from Census 2021 outputs at present in the associated download:

• TS003 - Household composition
• TS044 - Accommodation type
• TS048 - Communal establishment management and type
• TS054 - Tenure

This was downloaded from the Nomis website, which is a service run by Durham University on behalf of the Office for National Statistics.

If you are looking for more specific data that the information we have published, we may be able to produce this as a bespoke output. Such services would be subject to legal frameworks, disclosure controls, resources and agreement of costs. If you would like to request a bespoke dataset, please contact census.customerservices@ons.gov.uk, to discuss your enquiry further. Please note, there may be a charge for this work which would be subject to our charging policy.

The UK censuses are run separately by each National Statistics Office (Northern Ireland Statistics & Research Agency (NISRA), National Records of Scotland (NRS), and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) for both England and Wales).

Northern Ireland's census was taken in 2021 and you can access their census data via the following link: https://www.nisra.gov.uk/statistics/2021-census/results

Scotland's census was moved to 2022 so there may not be data available yet. Please see their website for information: https://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk/