Current Room and Space Standards

The tables below show the current (as at June 2010) statutory (i.e. legal) standards that councils use to check whether a home is overcrowded.

Both standards count living rooms and bedrooms as available sleeping accommodation.i.e. if a property has three bedrooms and one living room there will be four rooms available for sleeping.

Children of different sexes over the age of 10 cannot share a room.

Room Standard

For this standard Council’s cannot count children under the age of 10.

Number of Rooms	Number of Persons
1	2
2	3
3	5
4	7.5
5 or more	2 for each room

Space Standard

For this standard children under 1 years of age are not counted and children aged between 1 and 10 only count as half a person under the government standards.

Floor Area of Room	Number of Persons
10.2m² or more	2
8.4 m²or more but less than 10.2 m²	1.5
6.5 m² or more but less than 8.4 m²	1
4.6 m² or more but less than 6.5 m²	0.5

This page was last updated on 16 December 2011