Tenure of household (7 categories)

Description: Whether a household owns or rents the accommodation that it occupies.

Owner-occupied accommodation can be: * owned outright, which is where the household owns all of the accommodation * with a mortgage or loan * part-owned on a shared ownership scheme

Rented accommodation can be: * private rented, for example, rented through a private landlord or letting agent * social rented through a local council or housing association

This information is not available for household spaces with no usual residents.

Quality information: There is evidence of people incorrectly identifying their type of landlord as "Council or local authority" or "Housing association". You should add these two categories together when analysing data that uses this variable.

Comparability with 2011: Highly comparable

Number of rooms (VOA) (7 categories)

Description: A room can be any room in a dwelling apart from bathrooms, toilets, halls or landings, kitchens, conservatories or utility rooms. All other rooms, for example, living rooms, studies, bedrooms, separate dining rooms and rooms that can only be used for storage are included. If two rooms have been converted into one, they are counted as one room.

The number of rooms is recorded by address, this means that for households living in a shared dwelling the number of rooms are counted for the whole dwelling and not the individual household.

This definition is based on the Valuation Office Agency's (VOA) definition.

Quality information: It is inappropriate to measure change in number of rooms from 2011 to 2021, as Census 2021 used Valuation Office Agency data for this variable. Instead use Census 2021 estimates for number of bedrooms for comparisons over time.

Comparability with 2011: Not comparable. This variable cannot be compared with the variable used in the 2011 Census. This is because in Census 2021 the data are collected using administrative data instead of data from Census 2021.