The total number of households living in the council's area — essentially how big the place is. On its own it says nothing about homelessness; it is the yardstick used to turn raw counts into fair rates, so a big city and a small district can be compared. High simply means a larger area, low a smaller one.
| name | households_in_area |
|---|---|
| dataset | 06-hclic-temporary-accommodation |
| kind | extracted |
| type | count |
| unit | thousand households |
| grain | local authority (England) |
| role | denominator |
| source | data/Statutory_Homelessness_Detailed_Local_Authority_Data_202603.ods, sheet TA1, col 3 'Households in area (thousands)[note 5]' |
| period | Quarter-end snapshot, 31 March 2026 (Q4 FY2025-26); quarterly series from 2018 Q2; same columns in 202512_revised and 2024-25 annual files |
| missingness | Small counts rounded and some values suppressed; some LAs miss or partially complete H-CLIC returns and are imputed/flagged by MHCLG (see Notes sheet); previous-quarter figures routinely revised. |
| score_note | Convenient published denominator only; population denominators exist across several datasets. |
| peer_group | council class (district / county / unitary / metropolitan / London) — not yet scored on the leaderboard |
MHCLG-supplied estimate of total households in the council's area, in thousands. Used as the denominator for TA rates so caseloads are comparable across councils of very different sizes. Not a measure of council performance itself.