Great Western Coffee Shop

I wish I only spent less than £20:00 A week on fags and booze I don't think the chart is quite correct.

I wish I only spent less than £20:00 A week on fags and booze I don't think the chart is quite correct.

I find servants are much more expensive these days, and I can't find a chimneysweep for love nor money.

I can recommend one in Cornwall! He goes by the name of Dirty Dirk!

Where do I get housing, fuel and power for £300 a month?

I wish I only spent less than £20:00 A week on fags and booze I don't think the chart is quite correct.

I suspect the decrease in average household size and the significant increase in retired households has a dramatic effect on the figures.  And as this is average household not average person, single person households which tend to be pensioners / paid off mortgage types will have a disproportionate effect if you're thinking you're looking at the figures for average people.

The number of households in the UK on census day was 26.4 million.
There were 22.1 million households in England, 2.4 million households in Scotland, 1.3 million in Wales and 0.7 million in Northern Ireland.
The number of people living in households in the UK on census day was 62.1 million.
The average household size in the UK was 2.3 people per household, compared to 2.4 in 2001.
The number of people living in households in the UK increased by 7.5 per cent since 2001, whilst the number of households has increased by 8 per cent resulting in a decrease in average household size for the UK.
Two people households accounted for the largest number of households in the UK, at 9.0 million households (34 per cent of all households with usual residents).

In this section we will look at the average weekly amount spent on housing and household goods and services. In order to provide a more complete view of housing costs, we do not use the classification of individual consumption by purpose (COICOP) definition of housing as some expenditure is excluded. The housing costs discussed in this section include:

    net rent (that is, the amount payable by a household after housing benefits have been deducted)

    mortgage payments

    repairs and maintenance

    home improvements

The LCF is a voluntary sample survey of private households. The basic unit of the survey is the household. The LCF (in line with other government household surveys) uses the harmonised definition of a household: A household comprises 1 person living alone or a group of people (not necessarily related, living at the same address) who share cooking facilities AND share a living room or sitting room or dining area.

Members of a household are not necessarily related by blood or marriage; resident domestic servants are included as part of the household. The survey includes private households only. People living in hostels, hotels, boarding houses or institutions are excluded unless they form a private household within the institution (e.g. a warden living in a self-contained flat within a retirement home). Households are also included even if some or all members are not British subjects.

When looking at the housing costs figures, you need to consider what's been counted:

Note that council tax is excluded. However, other costs are dealt with on a cash-flow basis - ignoring what's interest or repayment, and excluding what's covered by benefits. (That's unusual - and quite different from the national Accounts methodology.)

Later it says that the average (nett) cost of rent just for tenants (36%) is £92.

So the average over all households is misleading. That's always the case with a bimodal distribution - two subpopulations with quite different averages. Often the average falls in a gap between the two peaks in the distribution (density) where there are hardly any members of either.