England needs more bedrooms – with 850,000 families living in overcrowded homes today

England now has 13 million more bedrooms than it did in the 1990s – with more than one-in-five homes now containing four or more bedrooms – but this has not been enough to bring down overcrowding according to new Resolution Foundation research published today (Wednesday).

The Foundation’s latest Housing Outlook examines how the number and distribution of bedrooms in English homes has changed over time, and the challenges this poses for policy makers. The analysis reveals that overall, overcrowding has increased slightly over the last three decades – from 3 per cent of households in 1994-95 to 4 per cent in 2022-23 – with 850,000 families living in overcrowded homes today.

The Foundation notes that the groups most likely to experience overcrowding in 1994-95 have almost all seen overcrowding rates increase – in particular: renting, low-income, ethnic minority or single-parent households. The greatest rise has been for Black and single parent households, which have both seen a 6 percentage point increase in rates of overcrowding. Some historically- overcrowded groups have seen improvements, with Asian households seeing rates drop by 5 percentage points over that time period, to reach 13 per cent – a welcome improvement, but still a worryingly high rate.

This rise in overcrowding has happened concurrently with English homes having, on average, more bedrooms today than three decades ago. This increase has come about through a combination of new building and existing households reclassifying other rooms as bedrooms. There has been a 71 per cent increase in households occupying four-bedroom properties – from 2.4 million in 1994-95, to 4.1 million in 2022-23 – resulting in 22 per cent of households now living in homes with four or more bedrooms.

But most households in England today are ‘under-occupying’ their homes, meaning they have more bedrooms than deemed necessary for their household composition. As many as three-in-four single pensioners now live in a home with a spare bedroom. Overall, 71 per cent of households have at least one spare bedroom, 2 percentage points more than 30 years ago.

Although there are more than enough suitably-sized dwellings in England, the report notes that it is an implausible policy aim to encourage a sizeable chunk of the population to ‘right-size’. Stronger incentives are possible – such as removing the Council Tax discount for single people living alone – but would likely be insufficient to outweigh the strong preferences people have for their homes and the space they provide.

The report concludes that given the unfeasibility of ‘right-sizing’, the policy priority to address overcrowding should be to build more larger homes. This should be focused in the social rented sector, where 9 per cent of households currently live in overcrowded conditions. The Foundation notes that in order to eliminate overcrowding in the social rented sector in England today, we would need to build 8,000 more three bed homes, 113,000 more four bed homes and 25,000 more homes with five or more bedrooms.

In addition, support for low-income renters through Local Housing Allowance should be unfrozen and re-pegged to local rents, so families in overcrowded private rented homes (where 7 per cent are overcrowded) can move to properties that more accurately reflect their needs.

Finally, the Foundation’s analysis suggests that the existing method for calculating sufficient floor space – the ‘bedroom standard’ – may be due for revision, as shifts in working patterns and a growing acceptance that older children and sometimes older couples should have their own bedroom mean that additional rooms are increasingly becoming the norm. An updated bedroom standard which reflects these trends would mean that the overcrowding rate for single parent households would jump from 18 per cent to 30 per cent – reflecting the disproportionate impact that overcrowding has on vulnerable groups in England.

Felicia Odamtten, Economist at the Resolution Foundation, said:

“Despite adding 13 million bedrooms to its housing stock between 1994 and 2022, England now has 850,000 families living in overcrowded homes. Shockingly, renting, low-income, ethnic minority and single-parent households are all more likely to live in overcrowded conditions today than they were thirty years ago.

“Although we do have enough suitably sized homes to go around, policy measures to address under- occupation and overcrowding by encouraging ‘right-sizing’ are unlikely to be effective.

“If we want to address these worrying levels of overcrowding, then we need to build more larger homes, especially in the social rented sector, and ensure that appropriately-sized housing is affordable for people in all tenures.”