How many UK homes are actually accessible? The numbers

If you have ever searched for an accessible home and wondered whether it is really this hard, the honest answer is yes — and the numbers show it. Every figure on this page comes from a published source: the English Housing Survey, government statistics, or research by Habinteg and the Centre for Ageing Better. Each one is linked so you can check it yourself.

One note on geography before we start. The most detailed housing-stock data covers England, because it comes from the English Housing Survey. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland measure their stock separately, so where a figure below says "England", that is exactly what it means.

UK accessible homes statistics: the headline numbers

The rest of this page explains what each number means, where it comes from, and why it matters if you are searching for somewhere to live.

What are the four accessibility features?

The English Housing Survey measures whether a home is "visitable": could a disabled person get through the front door, move around the entrance level, and use a toilet. That takes four features, and the Centre for Ageing Better's 2025 factsheet reports how many homes in England have each one:

Only 13% of homes have all four at once. Level access — simply reaching the front door without a step — turns out to be the rarest feature of the four.

It is worth pausing on what "visitable" means. It means a wheelchair user could visit. It says nothing about whether they could cook, bathe or live there full time. The bar these statistics measure is lower than most people assume, and we unpack the difference in what "wheelchair accessible" actually means.

Is it getting better?

Slowly. The all-four-features figure has moved from 5% in 2005 to 9% in 2018–19, and to 13% in the latest analysis, which draws on 2022 survey data.

The raw numbers show why campaigners still call it an accessibility gap. Ageing Better counts 3.3 million fully accessible homes in England in 2022 — against 16.1 million disabled people. Even allowing for shared households and widely varying needs, the shortfall is structural, not marginal.

Where you live changes the odds

Accessibility is not spread evenly. Among homes headed by someone aged 55–64, only 4% in the North East and the East Midlands have all four features, compared with 23% in London. The same search, in a different region, can face a market nearly six times thinner.

How many homes have adaptations?

Adaptations — changes made to an existing home — remain rare across England, according to the same 2025 factsheet:

What do the numbers say about renting?

The clearest single figure comes from the government's English Private Landlord Survey 2021: 47% of private landlords said they would be unwilling to let to somebody who requires adaptations to the property. Combine that with the scarcity of already-accessible stock, and the private rental search is often the hardest of all — which matches what disabled renters describe in forums, some of whom report searching for years.

Are new builds required to be accessible?

Mostly no. In England, Approved Document M of the Building Regulations sets three standards for new homes: M4(1) "visitable dwellings" is the mandatory baseline, while M4(2) "accessible and adaptable" and M4(3) "wheelchair user dwellings" are optional — they apply only where a local plan requires them.

Habinteg's 2025 forecast, based on 311 local plans, shows what that means for the next decade:

• 41% of all new homes being planned over the next ten years will not be built to either optional accessible standard.
• One new wheelchair user home is planned for every 2,006 people in the North West, compared with one for every 210 people in London.
• On the open market, just 3.3% of planned homes are set to meet the wheelchair user standard — and some local authorities are not planning any at all.

In other words, the new-build pipeline is a postcode lottery, and it will not close the gap on its own.

Why you can't see any of this on a property listing

Rightmove itself notes there are around 1.2 million wheelchair users in the UK, and that users have asked for accessibility search filters. The filters largely do not exist, because the underlying data does not exist: nobody measures the threshold, the doorway widths or the turning space when a home is listed for sale.

So a search that should take an evening becomes weeks of squinting at photos and floorplans. That gap between the statistics above and what a listing actually tells you is the problem Senso works on: paste a Rightmove listing link into Senso and it checks the photos and floorplan for you, producing a free, EPC-style accessibility certificate — including an honest "insufficient evidence" verdict where the listing cannot support an answer. For the wider search strategy, see how to find a wheelchair accessible home in the UK, and if you are weighing up a home for the years ahead, future-proofing your home covers the move-or-stay question.