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Council Housing: Overcrowding

Volume 473: debated on Thursday 13 March 2008

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what recent assessment her Department and its agencies have made of the level of overcrowding in social housing; and what statistical measures are used to quantify that level. (194507)

Levels of overcrowding are measured through the Survey of English Housing and assessed against the “bedroom standard”, based on the ages and composition of a household. The ‘Survey of English Housing Preliminary Results: 2006-07’ were published on 18 December 2007

http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/housing/sehprelimresults0607

Table 9 indicates that the rate of overcrowding in the social rented sector is 5.8 per cent. across England.

In December, the Department published ‘Tackling overcrowding in England: an action plan’ to assist local authorities in developing their own strategies to tackle overcrowding.