Guidance

English Housing Survey: information for households

Information for households who have been selected to take part in the English Housing Survey.

Applies to England

The English Housing Survey (EHS) is a continuous national survey commissioned by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC). It collects information about people’s housing circumstances and the housing stock in England.

If you have been selected to take part in the English Housing Survey we very much hope that you will agree to take part.

Your household will have been selected at random to take part in this important survey and once chosen cannot be replaced with another. This way we can be sure we collect information on a true cross-section of households and properties.

Survey leaflets

The leaflets below set out more information about how the survey data is used and how your responses will be treated in confidence.

English Housing Survey: information for home owners

Request an accessible format.
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please email [email protected]. Please tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use.

English Housing Survey: information for social renters

Request an accessible format.
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please email [email protected]. Please tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use.

English Housing Survey: information for private renters

Request an accessible format.
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please email [email protected]. Please tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use.

English Housing Survey: explaining the surveyor's visit

Request an accessible format.
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please email [email protected]. Please tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use.

Privacy notice

Our privacy notice explains why and how we use the personal data respondents provide to the English Housing Survey. It also describes respondents’ rights and how they can contact us, if they have any questions.

Data security

All respondents taking part in the English Housing Survey are given an assurance by DLUHC and its contractor team that the information they provide will be handled in the strictest confidence as directed by the Code of Practice for Statistics. We undertake to ensure that the survey information will be used to produce anonymous statistics for decision making in government and for genuine research purposes only.

We have set out the steps we take to ensure respondent anonymity while still maximising the utility of the statistics for users, in our data security strategy. This document explains how data are handled and steps we take to prevent any intentional or unintentional disclosure of information that would enable individual households to be identified.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) contribute funding to the English Housing Survey. DLUHC and BEIS analysts use the data for research. A Memorandum of understanding in relation to data sharing (PDF, 258 KB, 11 pages) sets out the procedures that will be followed and the safeguards that have been put into place to ensure that the data shared between the two organisations are kept secure and are not disseminated in any way that might reveal private information on survey respondents.

Further information

There is further information about taking part in the survey on Natcen’s website. If you would like further information about the English Housing Survey or would like to be added to our mailing list please contact:

email: [email protected]

Tel: 0303 444 0000

English Housing Survey project management
Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities
4th floor SW, Fry Building
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF

Updates to this page

Published 19 December 2012
Last updated 3 March 2023 + show all updates
  1. Updated survey leaflets.

  2. Added privacy notice.

  3. First published.

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