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Housing Quality and Energy analysis & reporting
Clear data storytelling is essential to support data-driven decision-making. Our team has extensive experience analysing and reporting on national housing surveys across the devolved UK nations and a wide range of related projects. We produce high-quality visualisations in line with Government Statistical Service best practice and draw on BRE’s extensive library of domestic housing imagery to help illustrate key findings on housing stock, construction, energy performance, and condition. Our analysis applies appropriate statistical techniques to ensure research aims are robustly and effectively addressed.
Case studies
English Housing Survey
The latest English Housing Survey reports provide a clear picture of housing condition, safety and energy performance across England, highlighting ongoing challenges such as damp and mould, non-decent homes, and the slow uptake of low-carbon technologies. Together, they offer vital evidence to improve housing quality, protect vulnerable households and support the transition to net zero.
EHS 2023-24 Driver and impacts of housing quality report
Damp homes
The 1.3 million damp occupied homes contained 470,000 vulnerable households. 1.0 million dependent children (of which 482,000 were in relative low income), and 324,000 people aged 65 or over.
Impact on vulnerable households
Of the 3.5 million occupied non-decent homes one million of those housed vulnerable households in receipt of means-tested or disability benefits. A quarter of the households with someone on the social housing waiting list lived in non-decent homes, and 17% lived in a home with damp.
Impact on children
There were 1.7 million dependent children (of which 622,000 were relative low income) living in non-decent homes, as well as 1.5 million people aged 65 or over.
Common issues
The most common elements of poor quality were windows in poor condition, problems with noise, problems with bathrooms, and external doors in poor condition.
Decent Homes Standard
Dwellings were more likely to be non-decent if they were built before 1919, had an Energy Efficiency Rating below D, were a converted flat, were in villages and hamlets or were households were overcrowded.
Vacant and occupied housing
Vacant dwellings were almost twice as likely to be non-decent compared with occupied dwellings, although the prevalence of damp was the same across both.
EHS 2023-24 Low carbon technologies in English homes fact sheet
Photovoltaic solar panels
In 2023, around 1.5 million dwellings (6%) had photovoltaic (PV) panels present. PV panels were more likely to be found on owner occupied dwellings (7%) compared with social and private rented dwellings (5% and 2%, respectively).
Heat pumps at home
Heat pumps were most likely to be found in owner occupied dwellings (1%) and social rented dwellings (1%) compared with private rented dwellings (0.5%). Dwellings in rural areas (8%) were more likely to have hear pumps compared with urban areas (0.5%).
Electric vehicle charging access
Electrical vehicle charge point access was most common among younger, higher income owner occupiers and those living in flats.
Electric and Hybrid vehicle ownership
Households most likely to own an electric or hybrid vehicle tended to be owner occupiers, higher income earners, those in rural areas, and those where the household reference person was middle-aged.
Energy efficiency in homes
Homes in the private sector, in rural areas, and those occupied by older, single-person, or child free households were more likely to fall into the lowers energy efficiency bands (F or G).
Households most likely to benefit
Renewable energy and electric technologies are more energy efficient than fossil fuel alternatives. If households made a switch to more sustainable technologies, those in the lowest energy efficient homes would see the greatest reduction in energy bills and greatest increase in thermal comfort.
EHS 2022-23 Energy report
Energy efficiency
Over the past decade, energy efficiency of English housing has continued to improve.
Reasons for improvements works
Nearly three-quarters of owner occupier carried out improvement works on their homes in the last 5 years. The most common reasons included repairing or replacing broken equipment, making homes more energy efficient and making general improvements to the home.
Energy Follow-Up Survey 2017
The 2017 Energy Follow-Up Survey was a follow-up survey of a sample of respondents from the English Housing Survey and provided more detailed information on use of heating, hot water and appliances, including the examples below.
Electricity consumption
Using dwelling, household, appliance use and detailed electricity consumption data, we created a model that determined the most important factors in predicting electricity consumption with the number of wet appliances having the greatest impact.
Gas consumption
Analysis of complex gas consumption data enabled us to profile average hourly gas consumption for the heating season, by fuel poverty status. Households in fuel poverty had greater levels of gas consumption in the morning and throughout the day, compared with households not in fuel poverty. The result was likely influenced by the types of household that make up the fuel poor group, as fuel poor households were larger and more likely to be in during the day.