Accredited official statistics

Technical notes and glossary

Published 28 November 2024

Applies to England

1. Technical notes

Results for households are presented for ‘2023-24’ and are based on fieldwork carried out between April 2023 and March 2024 on a sample of 15,846 households. Throughout the report, this is referred to as the ‘full household sample’.

Results that relate to the physical dwelling, are presented for ‘2023’ and are based on fieldwork carried out between April 2022 and March 2024 (a mid-point of April 2023). The sample comprises 13,288 occupied and vacant dwellings. In 2022, face-to-face interviews and internal inspections of properties resumed with the option for the interview to be carried out by telephone if needed (knock to nudge approach).

The reliability of the results of sample surveys, including the English Housing Survey, is positively related to the unweighted sample size. Results based on small sample sizes should therefore be treated as indicative only because inference about the national picture cannot be drawn. To alert readers to those results, percentages based on a row or column total with unweighted total sample size of less than 30 are italicised. To safeguard against data disclosure, the cell contents of cells where the cell count is less than 5 are replaced with a “u”.

Where comparative statements have been made in the text, these have been significance tested to a 95% confidence level. This means we are 95% confident that the statements we are making are true.

A more thorough description of the English Housing Survey methodology is provided in the Technical Report which is published annually. A full account of data quality procedures followed to collect and analyse English Housing Survey data can be found in the Quality Report, which is also updated and published annually.

For data underlying this report, see the Annex Tables and Figures published alongside this report.

2. Glossary

For detailed glossary of terms used throughout this report please see the Glossary.