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With these definitions in mind the basic housing details for the years 1931, 1951 and
1961 are shown in table (iv) below:

Number of persons in these households
4,122,639 3,161,901 3,024,585
Number of rooms occupied 4,198,292 3,801,320 3,929,715
Average number of persons per
room 0.98 0.83 0.77
Households sharing
accommodation 63% 47.8% 29.9%
The total stock of structurally separate dwellings has increased over the past thirty years;
by 10 per cent. in the twenty years 1931-51 and by 14 per cent. in the ten years 1951-61.
(The period 1931-51 included the war years when there was extensive damage to residential
property.) The number of rooms within the dwellings has, however, changed: in 1951 there
were some 422,000 fewer rooms than in 1931 and between 1951 and 1961 the number of
rooms increased by only four per cent. compared with the 14 per cent. increase in dwellings,
with consequent changes in the index of rooms per occupied dwelling—from 5.8 in 1931 to
4.8 in 1951 and to 4.4 in 1961. There has, of course, been much rebuilding in London over
the thirty years (some 78,000 houses have been demolished under slum clearance schemes
by the London County Council and the metropolitan borough councils) and considerable
conversion of existing premises and extensive new housing developments by both local
authorities and private developers. In all these schemes the trend has been to produce a
greater opportunity for households to have accommodation of their own; as evidenced by
the fall in the proportion of households sharing accommodation—from two in every three
sharing in 1931 to one in two in 1951 and one in three in 1961.
If housing standards can be crudely expressed by the average number of persons per
room, there has been a marked improvement from 0.98 in 1931 to 0.83 in 1951 and to 0.77
in 1961. This reduction in the average has operated with minor variations throughout the
entire range of household sizes. There has been a significant change in household sizes,
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