please empty your brain below
Odd selection of time periods, is this the reports table or your table?, why not have consistent blocks instead of 25, 19, 15, 10, 29 and counting?

How much got built 1939-1945 for example?, how much was destroyed and replaced with parallel provision in the new towns?

Still Anon | 27.04.19 - 8:06 a.m. | #

I've provided a link to the data. Why not check that before launching into irrelevant ungrateful pedantic questioning?

diamond geezer | Homepage | 27.04.19 - 8:38 a.m. | #

Bit suprised theres only 2% single storey. Loads of bungalows in the outer boroughs.

Fred | 27.04.19 - 9:41 a.m. | #

Even in the bungalowiest borough, which is Havering, only 10% of the housing stock is bungalows.

Across Inner London it's less than ¼%.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 27.04.19 - 9:42 a.m. | #

Just goes to show the enduring impact of the London County Council's housing policies!

B | 27.04.19 - 9:44 a.m. | #

Mezzanines, basements/cellars and loft converations; are they counted as floors? There must loads of those in London.

E | 27.04.19 - 9:57 a.m. | #

Perhaps the major dip in building 1981-1990 is something to do with M. Thatcher.

YDU | 27.04.19 - 10:01 a.m. | #

Very interesting! I'd like to know the average number of storeys here in Hong Kong - it's probably higher than any other major city. I suspect the majority of the population live in blocks higher than 20 storeys but I haven't managed to find any data.

Alan | 27.04.19 - 10:03 a.m. | #

The drop in the 1980s is due to the falling population in London as people moved elsewhere

Lumma | Homepage | 27.04.19 - 10:21 a.m. | #

I am not sure you are comparing like with like. Always a problem with these statistics.

By NY City I would guess that it is the Five Boroughs, not the New York MSA, that the numbers are from. The MSA would be much closer to Greater London in scope and population settlement patterns. The Paris numbers, for the Petite Couronne, are more like for roughly Zone 1+2 in London. The Grande Couronne for Paris might be a much better statistical analogue for Greater London.

I suspect that if the numbers for the NY MSA and the Paris Grande Couronne are used then the contrast with London would not be so great. All three have high density inner cores with low density outer surrounding regions with clumps of higher density around old urban cores.

jmc | 27.04.19 - 10:23 a.m. | #

I recommend reading the Methodology section of Jim's report.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 27.04.19 - 10:26 a.m. | #

I have always lived on the second or third floor since moving to London so I feel decidedly average.

Matthew | 27.04.19 - 11:09 a.m. | #

You ask "How many storeys high is the average London home?", but you're really answering "What is the average height of buildings with homes in them?".

Dubidubno | 27.04.19 - 11:47 a.m. | #

If we assume that most flats are one storey high, then the the average height of a London 'home' is about one and a half storeys. But the average residential building remains two or three storeys high.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 27.04.19 - 12:15 p.m. | #

I think you're seriously underestimating the height of residential blocks of flats. Here in Croydon we've already got several blocks in the town centre which are 15+ storeys, and another three are being built, two of which are going to be 35 storeys! And then there are the office blocks which have been turned into flats. Pretty sure Croydon isn't unique in this.

Margaret | 27.04.19 - 12:20 p.m. | #

The existence of several very tall residential buildings won't be enough to outweigh the much larger number of lower 'high rise' buildings across London.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 27.04.19 - 12:30 p.m. | #

My parents have just visited Tokyo and one of their strongest impressions was of the large number of high rise apartment blocks here.

Jon Allen | 27.04.19 - 12:38 p.m. | #

DG, Grenfell Tower had 22 storeys, didn't it? And it was a bog-standard 60s council tower block. Every London borough must have dozens of them.

Margaret | 27.04.19 - 12:51 p.m. | #

i visited tokyo last year and the land use is rather surprising. in areas like shinjuku, you often find roads lined with 6 to 10 story buildings, but they are not commercial/retail on ground level then residential above as you might expect. rather there is commercial/retail at every level, and often to visit a restaurant or cafe you would have to climb several floors. i can't really think of a similar experience in the uk. shopping centres wouldn't count because they are self contained complexes with fairly large internal spaces to transverse, the experience of tokyo was more like entering an office block and getting the lift to the 7th floor to go to the barber etc.

| 27.04.19 - 1:07 p.m. | #

I'm not doubting any of the research or conclusions, but it strikes me that it's an argument for ever denser and taller blocks of flats.

Caz | 27.04.19 - 1:27 p.m. | #

Amused by the comments to this blog - highlights the importance of teaching statistics and research methods. Too many experts are derided because Jo Public sees the unusual which sticks in their minds rather than the usual which doesnt. Ie because I can see a few 20 storey tower blocks when I'm out and about I assume huge number of people must live in tower blocks; disregarding the 1000s of suburban streets with 2 storey houses where most people actually live. Just reading DG's blogs, who has probably visited more of London than the vast majority of readers, highlights the ordinariness of most of London's housing.

The statistic that most struck me is that I live in one of a quarter of London's homes that are over 100 years old. This is slightly higher than the English average of 20%. There can not be many classes of assets which are still so extensively used which are that old.

Stan Dev | 27.04.19 - 1:34 p.m. | #

Six outer London boroughs - Bexley, Enfield, Havering, Hillingdon, Merton and Richmond - have no residential towers of 20+ storeys.

Bexley has one 13-storey residential block on the drawing board. It will be the borough's tallest building.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 27.04.19 - 4:11 p.m. | #

I too live in a house built in the 19th century, so that surprised me too.

The question as to how high is the average home is not the same as how tall is the building it is in. Even in a ten storey block of flats 10% of the homes are at ground level.

And the highest above sea level? An apartment on the 65th floor of the Shard.

dg writes: The top floor of the cottage beside Hawleys Corner at Westerham Heights would be about 240m above sea level. The Shard's uppermost penthouse duplex is empty, and only 224m up.

Timbo | 27.04.19 - 9:20 p.m. | #

The height above ground of the "average" home will be close to half the height of the building (most blocks of flats have similar number of homes on each floor). Bringing sea level into it is yet another complication, of course. But yes, the Shard would be high enough to be a mountain if it was a hill.

Malcolm | 27.04.19 - 9:39 p.m. | #

The English Housing Survey is a superb resource. It has comprehensive descriptions, including the exact number of storeys in the building, for each home surveyed: about 12,000 of them. But that translates into about 1,500 in London, or only 75 dwellings in 6-or-more-storeyed blocks. Most of those cases are under 10 storeys, and that leaves too few cases to capture the exact rate of 13- or 18-storey towers. Buildings put up after about 2013 are also under-represented in the data (because they don't get onto the postcode database at once, and the survey takes rather over 2 years to complete).

Still Anon: the age bands make sense in physical terms, as building styles changed markedly between these epochs. Homes before 1919 had solid walls; afterwards, cavity walls -- although London is special here and still put up a lot of interwar solid walls, unlike the rest of the country. The first Building Regulations came in in 1965. And so forth: these uneven bands are helpful both for the surveyors and for users of the data.

E: basements aren't counted. Loft conversions are, as long as the habitable area of the loft is at least half the area of the next floor down.

Stan Dev: sound commentary!

HTFB | 27.04.19 - 9:51 p.m. | #

The changing building archetypes in the various age bands are shown in the Valuation Office Agency property groupings, with pictures, here.

HTFB | 27.04.19 - 10:54 p.m. | #

HTFB - thanks - the index to groups is very moreish.

Still Anon | 28.04.19 - 9:20 a.m. | #

DG, you very helpfully spell out that the data is the number of homes in buildings with a particular number of storeys, but then go on to explain the mode as though we were dealing with the number of buildings.

Jonathan D | 30.04.19 - 12:38 a.m. | #











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