Housing Needs Assessment 2006 - Westminster City Council

17. Overcrowding and under-occupation17. Overcrowding and under-occupation17.1 IntroductionThis chapter briefly studies the extent of overcrowding and under-occupation of households livingin each individual tenure group. The standards used to check for overcrowding/under-occupationwere as follows:• Overcrowding: each household was assessed as to the number of bedrooms required. Anyhousehold without enough bedrooms was deemed to be over-crowded.• Under-occupation: households with more than one spare bedroom are deemed to be underoccupied.17.2 Overcrowding and under-occupationThe table below shows a comparison between the numbers of bedrooms in each home against thenumber of bedrooms required for all households.Table 17.1 Overcrowding and under-occupationNumber ofNumber of bedrooms in homebedrooms required 1 2 3 4+ TOTAL1 bedroom 33,477 24,462 18,101 2,575 78,6152 bedrooms 1,496 7,937 10,258 2,765 22,4563 bedrooms 13 553 5,285 3,721 9,5724+ bedrooms 11 36 515 1,191 1,753TOTAL 34,997 32,988 34,159 10,252 112,395KEY: Overcrowded households Under-occupied householdsNote:The bottom two cells of the 4+ bedroom column contain some households that are eitherovercrowded or under-occupied – for example they may require three bedrooms but live ina five bedroom property or may require a five bedroom property but are currently occupyinga four bedroom property.Source: City of Westminster Housing Needs Survey 2006The estimated number of overcrowded and under-occupied households is as follows:• Overcrowded: 2.7% of households = 3,051 households• Under-occupied: 20.9% of households = 23,441 householdsPAGE 155