The type of accommodation used or available for use by an individual household. Examples include the whole of a terraced house, or a flat in a purpose-built block of flats.

A dwelling is a unit of accommodation in which all rooms – including the kitchen, bathroom and toilet – are behind a door that only that household can use.
A dwelling may comprise one or more household spaces (the accommodation used or available for use by an individual household).
A dwelling may be classified as shared or unshared. A dwelling is shared if:

• the household spaces it contains have the accommodation type ‘part of a converted or shared house’
• not all of the rooms (including kitchen, bathroom and toilet, if any) are behind a door that only that household can use, and
• there is at least one other such household space at the same address with which it can be combined to form the shared dwelling.

Dwellings that do not meet these conditions are unshared dwellings.

A household is defined as one person living alone, or a group of people (not necessarily related) living at the same address who share cooking facilities and share a living room or sitting room or dining area

A household must contain at least one person whose place of usual residence is at the address. A group of short-term residents living together is not classified as a household, and neither is a group of people at an address where only visitors are staying.

A household space is the accommodation used or available for use by an individual household.
Household spaces are identified separately in census results as those with at least one usual resident, and those that do not have any usual residents.
A household space with no usual residents may still be used by short-term residents, visitors who were present on census night, or a combination of short-term residents and visitors.
Vacant household spaces and household spaces that are used as second addresses are also classified in census results as household spaces with no usual residents.

Household composition classifies households according to the relationships between the household members. Households consisting of one family and no other usual residents are classified according to the type of family (married, same-sex civil partnership or cohabiting couple family, or lone parent family) and the number of dependent children. Other households are classified by the number of people, the number of dependent children, or whether the household consists only of students or only of people aged 65 and over.
This definition is used in most results from the 2011 Census. In a small number of results an alternative classification is used that defines households by the age of the household members. It takes no account of the relationships between them. In results where this different definition is used it is clearly indicated.

Tenure provides information about whether a household rents or owns the accommodation that it occupies and, if rented, combines this with information about the type of landlord who owns or manages the accommodation.

Accommodation that is ‘other social rented’ includes accommodation that is rented from a registered social landlord, housing association, housing co-operative or charitable trust.