Ever been late for work after waiting 30 minutes for your flatmate to finish up their lengthy shower routine? It’s one of the UK’s most hated things about renting in a flatshare.
And as if you needed more evidence that the UK Rent Crisis is worst in the capital, we can now definitively reveal that Central London is the worst place in the whole UK for sharing a bathroom, too.
To make a splash (sorry) and show the country where the wait for the bathroom is longest, we’ve done some maths and given major UK cities a bathroom queue score.
We call it the PQ Index (sorry again). The higher the number, the more people the average renter in the area shares their bathroom with. Simple!
The Results
Major Cities | PQ Index (tenants per bathroom) |
London | 1.60 |
Manchester | 1.51 |
Leeds | 1.47 |
Cardiff | 1.39 |
Birmingham | 1.32 |
Liverpool | 1.27 |
Newcastle | 1.22 |
Quality of Life & the Rental Crisis
How many people you share your bathroom with is a serious indicator of your quality of life. Thousands more people are moving into the private rental sector (PRS) every month, so keeping an eye on these indicating factors is getting more and more important.
In London, where the rent crisis is most acute, renters have a score significantly above the national average of 1.35. In Central London, the average score was 1.61.
London Postcodes
If we look even closer at the data, we find some huge variance inside the capital. We broke down the numbers based on postcodes to bring you the three best and worst London postcodes for sharing the bog.
Best Postcodes:
- 0.82 – Wimbledon
- 1.04 – Raynes Park
- 1.08 – Golders Green
Wimbledon is the best postcode in London, with a PQ Index score of 0.82. That means that every Wimbledonian has 1.21 toilets between then! You could say that when in Wimbledon, you won’t be stuck on deuce for long…
Worst Postcodes:
- 3.00 – Charlton
- 2.43 – Forest Gate
- 2.22 – Walworth
A PQ Index score of 3.00 means that the poor tenants of Charlton share their privy with two others on average! Maybe the bathroom-rich people of Wimbledon would share some of their extra loos?
Start the discussion at community.openrent.co.uk