Housing in London: overcrowding in the capital's homes at a 40-year high

Overcrowding has become more acute in almost a third of London neighbourhoods since 1971, according to a report released today. 
One of photographer Nick Hedges images of slum conditions in London in the early Seventies
Nick Hedges/Shelter

Shocking pictures of overcrowding in appalling slums taken by photographer Nick Hedges in the early Seventies for the then-newly formed charity, Shelter, shocked the nation.

Yet overcrowding worsened after 1971. Over the following half-century, the problem became more acute in 31 per cent of London neighbourhoods.

In 2017 the most overcrowded borough was Newham followed by Redbridge, Barking & Dagenham.

This is according to the most detailed academic study yet carried out on the subject, conducted by Professor Christopher Lloyd of Queen’s University Belfast. He found that the trend has accelerated from the turn of the century with a huge increase in the capital’s population and a slowdown in housebuilding.

The study comes two months after a police raid uncovered one of the worst examples of illegal overcrowding in London in many years.

A landlord in Dagenham is now facing prosecution following the discovery of up to 30 occupants rammed into a squalid three-bedroom property.

More than 25 people were thought to be living in the main building in Albert Close and two were in an illegal makeshift shed in the garden, officials said.

Between the 2001 and 2011 censuses, the number of homes in London increased by only nine per cent from 3.09 million to 3.36 million, while the population surged 14 per cent, or just over one million people, from 7.17 million to 8.17 million. London was the only region in England where population growth outstripped the supply of new homes in the Nineties and the Noughties.

As a result the percentage of Londoners living in homes with an average of more than one person per room — the study’s definition of overcrowding — has been on the increase for decades.

In 1971 almost 8.5 per cent of homes in London fell into this category. But thanks to a huge council housebuilding programme in the Seventies, this had fallen to 5.28 per cent by 1981. It bottomed out at 4.12 per cent in 1991, but has been rising ever since, and was at a 40-year high of 5.84 per cent in 2011.

Professor Lloyd, who worked on the study with James Gleeson from the Greater London Authority, said: “By looking at a period of almost 50 years, we made some stark findings about housing in London and South-East England.

“In England as a whole, the number of homes grew eight per cent between 1991 and 2001, while the number of people grew 4.5 per cent, which indicates that there is actually more space per person in housing.

“However, when we look at the period between 2001 and 2011, both the number of homes and the number of people in England grew by eight per cent. London stands out as the only region where overall growth in people outpaced growth in homes but in every other region there were some neighbourhoods where housing growth failed to keep up with growth in the population.”

The study, which was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and used census and other Office for National Statistics data, broke down overcrowding information to local authority level.

Unsurprisingly, the least-crowded local authority areas were the City of London and Kensington & Chelsea.