Quality Assurance report - Housing
Background
This report accompanies the publication of Scotland’s Census 2022 housing and communal establishments topic data. It builds on the quality assurance reports published so far.
Information on imputation rates for this topic have also been published on the Scotland’s Census website.
Quality information for communal establishments
Topic expert quality assurance panel
We invited housing analytical colleagues from National Records of Scotland (NRS) and Scottish Government to participate in a quality assurance panel on the housing and communal establishments data. Panel sessions assessed the coherence of 2022 Census statistics with previously published census estimates for Scotland, England and Wales, and Northern Ireland, as well as with other available data on the topics. The panel concluded that there were no remaining quality concerns which required investigation before publication.
Communal establishments
In May 2024, we published the residence type variable that provides information on whether people live in a household or a communal establishment (CE). The quality report accompanying the release of that variable gives further details on its quality. In summary, the response rate for people living in households was 90.5%, while for people living in CEs it was 42.7%. Administrative data (data collected about services such as how many people live in prisons or in care homes) has been used as the basis for coverage adjusting these CE estimates to ensure that the statistics represent the total CE population by age and sex. The quality of administrative data for CEs gave us confidence in making larger adjustments than were required for the household population. Validation of our population estimates for CEs with comparator data sources and discussions with topic experts further increased our confidence in these estimates.
In this release, we have published more detailed information on the type of CE individuals live in and on the number of each type of CE. Quality assurance of the characteristics of CE individuals carried out during the post-adjustment edit and imputation process also confirmed that imputation had worked as expected. More information about our edit and imputation process is available on our website.
Number of Communal Establishments
Our published estimates of the number of communal establishments include only communal establishments occupied by usual residents. This differs to 2011 when unoccupied establishments on our CE address register were included. Comparisons with 2011 may therefore result in larger than expected differences.
Communal establishment usual resident definition
Individuals are considered usual residents in a CE if they were staying or were intending to stay in a CE for 6 months or more, or had no usual place of residence in the UK and were present in a CE on Census Day. This includes dependent children staying in CEs during term time (e.g. at boarding school) and students staying in CEs during term time (e.g. in a hall of residence).
Prison or young offenders’ institutions
For prisons or young offenders’ institutions, an individual is considered a usual resident for census purposes if they are in prison on remand for six months or more, or convicted and sentenced to 12 months or more commencing on or before census day. Individuals in prison on remand (for less than six months), awaiting sentence, or sentenced to less than 12 months in prison will be counted as usual resident at their home address except those that do not have any other usual residence in the UK who were counted as usually resident at the prison.
Defence establishments
For Defence establishments, members on deployment on operations remain usual residents in the UK regardless of length of deployment. However, armed forces members permanently stationed abroad (for example, in Germany or Cyprus) are not usual residents of the UK and were not included in the census. Armed forces personnel were counted as usually resident at their permanent or family home, even if most of their time is spent at their armed forces base address. This included personnel based on ships. For personnel living on an armed forces base only those living in single living accommodation were considered as living in a CE, those living in households were not.
Hostels for the homeless or temporary shelters
The number of people living in the CE type “hostel for the homeless or temporary shelter” does not correspond to the entire homeless population resident in Scotland. Homeless people reside in a variety of different types of accommodation and will be included in census, but it is not possible to identify them as homeless in the census data. There could also be individuals living in hostels for the homeless or temporary shelters that are not homeless.
Rough sleeping individuals
During the census data collection, hubs were provided for people who were sleeping rough to have support to fill in their census. Individuals who responded to census using these hubs are included in the CE category of ‘other establishment’. It is recognised that this method will not have reached all rough sleepers.
Quality information for housing variables
Number of bedrooms/Occupancy rating
In 2011, information was collected on the number of rooms in a household. In 2022, after consultation with data users, the number of bedrooms was collected instead. Number of bedrooms is used to calculate an occupancy rating for each household which is the difference between the number of bedrooms in a household and the number of bedrooms required. In 2011, it was assumed that the number of bedrooms in a household was number of rooms minus 2.
The number of bedrooms required is based on the type of residents within the household. This calculation is based on a set of rules defined by the UK Government Housing (Overcrowded) Bill. The rules are different to those used to calculate occupancy rating in 2011 and therefore we do not recommend comparing occupancy rating estimates between the 2011 and 2022 censuses.
Central heating
There has been a slight increase in the number of households with no central heating in 18 local authorities although a decrease overall from 2.3% to 2.1%. This may be due to people misunderstanding the question by, for example, selecting no central heating because, although a system exists in the household, they do not use it.
There are 45 households on the Orkney Islands and 35 households on the Shetland Islands that answered ‘Mains gas’ for their central heating. These local authorities are not connected to the gas grid and these are likely respondent errors, for example, if an individual confused bottled gas with mains gas.
Tenure
The intention of the Census is to capture responses from 100% of Scotland’s population. These Census results do not report on the total housing stock, as any homes that were empty or unoccupied on the Census data will not be included. We are aware that some figures being presented, such as a small decline in the number of households living in the social rented sector from 2011, may differ from other administrative data sources measuring housing stock, which show small increases over the same period. The Scottish Government publishes data on housing stocks which provides a better indication of housing supply by tenure. SG analysts have also pointed out an increase in the number of void or empty homes in social rented housing in 2022, due to the impact of Covid-19 on local authorities’ ability to prepare homes for re-let after a change of tenancy.