Social housing in Dorset
12.3% of households in Dorset are social housing — council or housing-association homes. That is below the UK average of 17.5%.
12.3%Social housing
20,821Social homes
169,276All households
How much social housing is there in Dorset?
Dorset ranks 279th of 374 UK local authorities by social-housing share. Of its 169,276 households, 20,821 are social homes (12.3%) — renting from the council or a housing association.
How does Dorset compare with the UK average?
At -5.2 percentage points versus the UK average of 17.5%, Dorset sits below the national level.
Explore Dorset
See Dorset through the other lenses on the interactive map — house prices, recorded crime and anti-social behaviour, road & rail noise, deprivation and broadband:
Which areas are similar to Dorset?
“Social housing” means households renting from a council/local authority or a
housing association, counted on census day (2021 in England, Wales & Northern Ireland;
2022 in Scotland). Local-authority figures are aggregated by this site from small-area Census
data and may differ from official totals; Scotland reports a combined social-rented figure.
Sources: ONS Census 2021 (TS054), National Records of Scotland Census 2022 (UV404) and NISRA
Census 2021, under the Open Government Licence
v3.0. See the full notes and disclaimer.
Figures: 2021–22 Census · Page updated 18 July 2026 · Download the full dataset (CSV, all 374 councils).
Figures: 2021–22 Census · Page updated 18 July 2026 · Download the full dataset (CSV, all 374 councils).