Check if your home is overcrowded by law

Find out if your home is illegally overcrowded, also known as statutory overcrowding.

1. Room standard

The room standard looks at the number and sex of people who have to sleep in the same room.

Any room you can sleep in counts, not just bedrooms. Living room, dining rooms and studies count as rooms you can sleep in.

Your home is overcrowded by law if:

2 people of a different sex have to sleep in the same room
they are aged 10 or over

The rule doesn't apply to couples who share a room. Children under 10 aren't counted.

Example

A couple with two boys and a girl all aged under 10 living in a one-bedroom flat with a living room would not count as overcrowded under the room standard.

2. Space standard

This method is called the space standard. There are two ways to work out if a home is overcrowded under the law using this method.

First count the number of people:

anyone aged 10 or over counts as 1 person
children aged 1 to 9 count as 0.5
children under 1 year old don't count

Next, count the number of rooms or measure the floor space of each room.

Don't count any room that is:

under 50 square feet or 4.6 square metres
not a bedroom or living room

Check the tables below to see if your home counts as overcrowded under the law under the space standard.

If you get different results from each table, use the lowest figure of maximum number of people allowed.

Number of rooms

Number of rooms	Maximum number of people allowed
1	2
2	3
3	5
4	7.5
5	10

Floor space of each room

Room's floor space in square feet	Room's floor space in square metres	Maximum number of people allowed
50 - 69	4.6 - 6.4	0.5
70 - 89	6.5 - 8.3	1
90 - 109	8.4 - 10.1	1.5
110	10.2	2

Minimum bedroom sizes for Houses in multiple occupation (HMO)

Some houses in multiple occupation (HMO) must be licensed by the council.

If your landlord applied for a HMO licence on or after 1 October 2018 or has renewed it since, bedroom sizes must be at least:

6.51 square metres for an adult
10.22 square metres for two adults
4.64 square metres for a child under 10 years old

Some councils may set higher standards for bedroom sizes.

If a room is used as bedroom and doesn’t meet the size requirement, the council may allow your landlord up to 18 months to make the room larger or move you to a different bedroom.

The council can prosecute or fine your landlord if a bedroom is smaller than standards allow.