Indices of deprivation 2010. Housing related domains
ID2010 comprises seven 'domains' of indicators, two of which relate specifically to housing concerns: the Barriers to Housing and Services Domain, and the Living Environment Deprivation Domain.
Barriers to Housing and Services Domain
This domain measures the physical and financial accessibility of housing and key local services. The indicators fall into two sub-domains: ‘geographical barriers’, which relate to the physical proximity of local services, and ‘wider barriers’ which includes issues relating to access to housing such as affordability. Seven indicators are combined to calculate this domain:
Sub-domain: Wider barriers
- Household overcrowding – the proportion of households within an LSOA which are judged to have insufficient space to meet the household’s needs
- Homelessness – the rate of acceptances for housing assistance under the homelessness provisions of the 1996 Housing Act (at local authority district level)
- Difficulty of access to owner-occupation (local authority district level) – proportion of households aged under 35 whose income means they are unable to afford to enter owner occupation.
Sub-domain: Geographical barriers
- Road distance to a GP surgery
- Road distance to a supermarket or convenience store
- Road distance to a primary school
- Road distance to a Post Office.
Sandwell's position on this domain is generally much more healthy than in the other IMD domains, since Geographical barriers (i.e. access to services) is largely a rural deprivation concern (in fact, Sandwell ranks 318th out of 354 authorities, based on the average of its LSOA scores for this subdomain), and Difficulty of access to owner-occupation is effectively a measure of affordability, which tends to be more of a problem in the southeast, and can in some ways be seen as a proxy for the buoyancy of the housing market, rather than deprivation in its more conventional sense (Sandwell ranks 68th, based on averaging the LSOA scores, whilst Kensington and Chelsea is the second most deprived local authority, and places such as Kingston upon Thames, Brighton and Hove, and Eastbourne are more deprived than Sandwell).
The map below left shows the Wider Barriers subdomain within Sandwell, which is far less characterised by deprivation than the overall picture for Sandwell. However, comparison with the same subdomain in 2004 (bottom left) shows that Sandwell's LSOAs have become relatively more deprived in this respect.
Living Environment Deprivation Domain
This domain measures the quality of individuals’ immediate surroundings both within and outside the home. The indicators fall into two sub-domains: the ‘indoors’ living environment, which measures the quality of housing, and the ‘outdoors’ living environment which contains two measures relating to air quality and road traffic accidents. Four indicators are combined to calculate this domain:
Sub-domain: The indoors living environment
- Social and private housing in poor condition
- Houses without central heating.
Sub-domain: The outdoors living environment
- Air quality
- Road traffic accidents.
Within this domain, the subdomain relating to the indoor environment is a more conventional assessment of housing conditions as a measure of deprivation. Sandwell's considerable investment in 'Decent Homes' over recent years should certainly have improved the experience of Council residents in this respect, and there does appear to be at least some marginal relative improvement for some of Sandwell's LSOAs with respect to this subdomain, which can be seen by comparing the 2010 measure (below right), with the same visualisation of the 2004 data (bottom right). This visual comparison is confirmed by comparing the relative positions when the average of local authority LSOAs are ranked for this subdomain - Sandwell has improved from being ranked 10th most deprived in 2004 to 27th in 2010.