Constituency data: Home ownership and renting, 2021 census

The 2021 census asked respondents about their housing tenure: whether they owned their home outright, were buying with a mortgage, or rented from a private or social landlord. Social landlords can be local authorities or housing associations.

Some households also live in shared ownership homes (where the householders own a share of the property and pay rent on the rest). Others live rent-free in accommodation they don’t own.

The dashboard on this page shows the percentage of households in each of these tenure groups in constituencies in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The data reflects the population on Census Day, 21 March 2021.

The average across England and Wales is shown as context alongside figures in each constituency (as well as the average for the country or region the constituency is in).

Across England and Wales, 62% of households were homeowners, 20% were private renters, and 17% were social renters.

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Explore constituency data

• Find which constituency you live in

Use the dropdown menu below to select the constituency you’re interested in and view household statistics.

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If you would like to access this information in an alternative format please email papers@parliament.uk and we will review your request.

Top 20 constituencies by housing tenure

In the dashboard below, you can select a housing tenure group and see which constituencies have the largest proportions of households in each of those groups.

Constituencies with high proportions of renters tended to be in urban areas. London constituencies had some of the highest proportions of both private and social renters.

Constituencies with high rates of home ownership were not concentrated in any particular geographic area, but tended to be outside of London and in less urban areas.

Open a printable version
Download all data in Excel (2.25 MB)

If you would like to access this information in an alternative format please email papers@parliament.uk and we will review your request.

Definitions

A ‘household’ is defined as either one person living alone, or a group of people living at the same address and sharing both cooking facilities and a living room or dining area.

The category ‘all social landlords’ includes all households renting from a local authority or a housing association.

The ONS reports that there is evidence that some respondents incorrectly identified their landlord as a local authority when they were renting from a housing association, and vice versa. The two categories have therefore been added together for this dashboard.

Private renters either rent from a landlord or another party (other than a social housing provider). ‘Other private rented’ refers to arrangements such as renting from an employer.

‘Living rent free’ refers to households living in property owned by another party without paying rent.

In shared ownership housing, the household part-owns the property and pays rent on the rest. More background on shared ownership is available in the Commons Library briefing Shared ownership (England): the fourth tenure?.

Sources

ONS, 2021 Census, Table TS054

NISRA, 2021 Census Flexible Table Builder

Data updates

This dashboard uses 2021 census data. The 2021 census is currently the only source of constituency-level data on this topic, which means that there aren’t any updates planned for the near future.