Bedroom Entitlement Calculator

Bedroom entitlement is the most consequential number in a housing calculation, and the one nobody is ever shown. It decides which Local Housing Allowance rate caps a private rent, and whether a social tenant is under-occupying and losing 14% or 25%.

It is worked out entirely from who lives with you, never from the property. You get a room; a partner shares it; every other adult gets one of their own. Children under 10 are expected to share with any other child, and children aged 10 to 15 only with a child of the same sex. This calculator applies those rules and shows the working.

Because the ages and sexes of the children do the work, not the headcount. Two children under 10 are expected to share whatever their sexes, so a single parent with a boy of eight and a girl of nine is allowed two bedrooms in total. Move those same two children on a year each and the elder is 10, they are no longer expected to share, and the household is allowed three. Two children aged 10 to 15 still share if they are the same sex, so a family with two teenage boys is allowed fewer rooms than the identical family with a teenage boy and a teenage girl. From 16 everyone is counted on their own. That is why the same number of people can produce two, three or four bedrooms, and why the number changes on birthdays nobody flagged in advance.

A narrower list than most people expect. It is you, your partner, every child or qualifying young person you are responsible for, and every non-dependant who normally lives in the accommodation. Four groups are deliberately outside it, and each one surprises somebody. A lodger or boarder paying you on a commercial basis is not counted, so taking one in adds no room and does not stop a spare room being spare, even though their payments are ignored as income. A foster child is not counted either, because fostering is handled by a separate extra-room rule rather than by the headcount. A child nobody in the household is responsible for is not counted. Nor is anyone already counted as a non-dependant on somebody else's claim for the same address. Get the list wrong at the start and every figure after it is wrong too.

The entitlement changes on the birthday, and your award changes from the assessment period you report it in. A change of circumstances normally takes effect from the first day of the assessment period in which it happened, but a change in your favour reported after that period has closed only takes effect from the period you reported it. A tenth birthday that ends a mixed-sex sharing expectation, and a sixteenth that turns a child into someone counted on their own, are both exactly that kind of change. For a private renter the gain is the gap between two Local Housing Allowance bands in your area, which in an expensive market is substantial. For a social renter the same birthday can remove a spare bedroom and with it the whole under-occupancy reduction. Put it in your journal in the month it happens rather than assuming it will follow.

No, and it stops mattering in two places. For a private renter the element is never calculated above the four-bedroom rate, whatever the entitlement. A household allowed six bedrooms gets the four-bedroom rate for its area, so the fifth and sixth rooms are worth nothing and the shortfall grows with every extra person. For a social renter an entitlement above the size of the property is worth nothing either, because the reduction only bites where the property has more bedrooms than the entitlement. Being allowed five rooms in a three-bedroom house changes nothing at all. And an adult moving in can add a room and still leave you worse off: they raise the entitlement, but from age 21 they also cost £96.55 a month, deducted after everything else. Whether that is a net gain depends on the gap between two bands in your area.