Furness Room-Rent Affordability Index
This index compares a dated snapshot of advertised room rents in Barrow-in-Furness, Dalton-in-Furness and Ulverston with ONS median gross weekly pay and the published Barrow-in-Furness BRMA Local Housing Allowance shared accommodation rate as comparison benchmarks. The downloadable rows show the inputs and arithmetic. These comparisons do not calculate a particular renter's budget or benefit entitlement.
Headlines, Q3 2026
Geography correction — 18 October 2026. The official LA12 partial-postcode lookup returns both Barrow-in-Furness and Kendal BRMAs. The earlier source-method claim that all four postcode districts fall wholly within one BRMA was too broad.
This index uses the Barrow-in-Furness BRMA shared rate as a common comparison benchmark for the named-town advert samples. Neither a postcode district nor an advert’s town label determines the rate for a particular home. Use LHA-Direct with the actual postcode when checking an individual case. The dated rows, values and source-review dates are unchanged; the revised JSON adds a corrective limitation and preserves the original source-method record.
Pay benchmark scope — 18 October 2026. This index chooses the Westmorland and Furness local-authority workplace pay figure from ASHE Table 7 as a common comparison benchmark. It is not a separate earnings estimate for Barrow, Dalton or Ulverston, or the income of room renters.
Our earlier rationale that ASHE is not published below local-authority level was too broad: ONS also publishes workplace estimates by parliamentary constituency in Table 9. This revision does not substitute that alternative geography or change the published pay value and ratios.
Town by town
| Town | Priced adverts | Median room £/week | Median gross pay £/week | Rent as share of pay | Barrow BRMA shared-rate benchmark £/week | Gap to benchmark £/week | Adverts at or below benchmark |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Barrow-in-Furness (LA13/LA14) | 127 | £135 | £767.9 | 17.6% | £91 | +£44 | 0 (0%) |
| Dalton-in-Furness (LA15) | 5 | £127 | £767.9 | 16.5% | £91 | +£36 | 0 (0%) |
| Ulverston (LA12) | 8 | £138 | £767.9 | 18% | £91 | +£47 | 0 (0%) |
What the three numbers mean
- Rent as a share of pay. The median advertised room in Barrow takes 17.6% of median gross weekly pay for Westmorland and Furness. This is a full-time gross-pay benchmark, before income tax and National Insurance; it does not describe the income of a particular renter.
- The gap to the published shared rate. The Barrow-in-Furness BRMA shared accommodation rate used here is £91 a week. The median asking rent in the counted Barrow adverts is £44 a week above it, or £2288 over 52 weeks. That is an arithmetic comparison of a dated advert median and a published rate, not an estimate of what an individual claimant will receive or need to pay.
- How many counted adverts were at or below the rate. 0 of 127 priced Barrow adverts (0%) asked at or below the shared rate; the cheapest priced advert counted asked £92 a week. These are advert counts from one portal on one day, not a measure of a claimant's access to housing.
- The rate is frozen, and the VOA’s own rent data says so. The £91 shared rate has been carried forward unchanged since April 2024. The same VOA workbook publishes the 30th percentile of actual lettings in this Broad Rental Market Area, collected to September 2025, at £107.45 a week — £16.45 above the published shared rate. That gap was excluded from the calculation by the Rent Officers (Housing Benefit and Universal Credit Functions) (Modification) Order 2026 No. 5, not by anything about the local market.
The shared rate is a comparison benchmark, not a benefit award. GOV.UK explains that Universal Credit housing support depends on age, household size and location. The shared accommodation rate usually applies to an eligible person under 35 without a partner or children, but there are exceptions. Housing Benefit also depends on income and circumstances. Check the Universal Credit private-renting guidance and Housing Benefit guidance for your situation. Guidance reviewed 15 October 2026; the dated statistical inputs below are unchanged.
All three are computed at build time from the published rows, not typed in by hand, so the tables, the headline figures and the answers below cannot drift apart.
Sources, with the date each was checked
| Figure | Area | Value | Period | Publisher | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Median advertised room rent | Barrow, Dalton, Ulverston | see table above | Q3 2026 | Outstanding Property Ltd | Furness Room Rent Index collected 2 September 2026 · rows (CSV) |
| Median gross weekly pay, full-time employees, by place of work | Westmorland and Furness | £767.9 per week | ASHE 2025 (provisional) | Office for National Statistics | ONS, ASHE Table 7: place of work by local authority published 2025-10-23 · checked 2026-09-17 · Open Government Licence v3.0 |
| Local Housing Allowance shared accommodation rate (Category A) | Barrow-in-Furness BRMA | £91 per week | April 2026 to March 2027 | Valuation Office Agency | VOA, LHA rates applicable from April 2026 to March 2027 published 2026-01-30 · checked 2026-09-17 · Open Government Licence v3.0 |
Method, figure by figure
- Median gross weekly pay, full-time employees, by place of work (Westmorland and Furness, ASHE 2025 (provisional)): £767.9 per week. ASHE 2025 provisional, Table 7.1a (gross weekly pay, place of work), full-time employees, median, Westmorland and Furness unitary authority (E06000064). Read from the ONS dataset page above and cross-checked against the same cell in the NOMIS API (dataset NM_99_1, workplace analysis), which returns 767.9. Place of work, so it is what jobs in the area pay rather than what residents earn; gross, so before tax and National Insurance. The equivalent all-employees figure (full-time and part-time together) is £638.70 — we publish the full-time one because it is the standard headline, and the all-employees figure would make rents look less affordable, not more. Published 23 October 2025 by Office for National Statistics under Open Government Licence v3.0; checked 17 September 2026 at the source.
- Local Housing Allowance shared accommodation rate (Category A) (Barrow-in-Furness BRMA, April 2026 to March 2027): £91 per week. Table 4 (“LHA April 2026”) of the VOA’s 2026-27 LHA tables, row “Barrow-in-Furness”, column CAT A — the workbook’s Explanations sheet defines CAT A as “a dwelling where the tenant has exclusive use of only one bedroom with shared use of other facilities”, which is the shared accommodation rate. The index uses this Barrow-in-Furness BRMA rate as a common comparison benchmark for the three named-town advert samples. LA12 spans more than one BRMA; neither a district nor an advert’s town label establishes a particular home’s applicable rate. See the geography correction above. The original source-method record is preserved in the dated JSON with a corrective limitation. The rate is frozen: it is identical to the April 2024 rate in Table 1 of the same workbook, because the Rent Officers (Housing Benefit and Universal Credit Functions) (Modification) Order 2026 No. 5 excluded the newer lettings data from the calculation. Table 2 of the same workbook puts the 30th percentile of actual Barrow-in-Furness lettings up to September 2025 at £107.45 a week — £16.45 above the rate that is actually paid. Published 30 January 2026 by Valuation Office Agency under Open Government Licence v3.0; checked 17 September 2026 at the source.
The room-rent side is the Furness Room Rent Index — every live "room offered" advert on SpareRoom for each town on the count day, monthly prices converted to weekly (×12 ÷ 52), medians rather than averages. The share of adverts at or below the LHA rate is counted advert by advert against the LHA figure, not derived from the median.
Download the data — free to reuse with a link
Download the data. One row per town, 3 rows, every figure on this page plus the source URL and checked date behind each one:
- room-rent-affordability-2026-q3.csv — CSV, 2 KB, opens in Excel or Sheets
- room-rent-affordability-2026-q3-notes-2026-10-18-pay-scope.json — JSON, with the full source list, the method and the limitations in the payload
- Download the Q3 2026 research pack (ZIP, 17 KB) — both datasets, the SVG chart, sources, column definitions and a read-first note with the interpretation limits
The per-advert rows behind the rent side are published separately with the index itself: rent-index-2026-q3.csv.
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Free to reuse, republish and re-analyse, including commercially, with credit as a link to https://outstandingproperty.co.uk/. Read the licence. Please credit it as:
Source: Furness Room-Rent Affordability Index, Outstanding Property — https://outstandingproperty.co.uk/
The ONS and VOA figures are re-used here under the Open Government Licence and remain Crown copyright; credit them directly if you quote them on their own.
Each edition keeps its own permanent URL and is never overwritten, so a link to the Q3 2026 file will always return the Q3 2026 numbers.
Interpretation notes revised 18 October 2026. The JSON linked above has clearer benefit, income and geography limitations; its statistical rows and original source provenance are unchanged. Its corrective limitations supersede the original whole-postcode-district claim. The original edition JSON and 15 October 2026 notes JSON and 18 October 2026 geography notes JSON remain at their original URLs. The CSV is unchanged.
Copy a linked source credit
For an article or report: select and copy this HTML. It links the source, dated files and existing licence, and keeps the count date and sample limits with the credit.
Rendered credit:
Source: Furness Room-Rent Affordability Index — Q3 2026, by Outstanding Property. Rent adverts counted 2 September 2026. Statistical sources reviewed 17 September 2026. Interpretation notes revised 18 October 2026. One portal on one day; asking rents with bills varying. Pay and benefit figures are comparison benchmarks, not individual income or benefit awards. Dated JSON, method and limitations; CSV. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
What this index cannot tell you
Stated plainly, because the data is published for other people to use:
- Geography correction, 18 October 2026: the preserved source-method record says all four postcode districts fall wholly within Barrow-in-Furness BRMA. This is too broad: the official LA12 partial-postcode lookup returns both Barrow-in-Furness and Kendal BRMAs. These rows use a common Barrow-in-Furness shared-rate benchmark for the named-town advert samples; they do not determine the applicable rate for an individual advert or home. Check the actual postcode through LHA-Direct.
- Advertised rents, not agreed rents, and one portal on one day. The rent side of every ratio here inherits every limitation of the Furness Room Rent Index — read them on that page and in its data file.
- Rent medians cover all priced adverts, whether or not bills are included. Rents are not adjusted to a common bills-inclusive total, so the rent/pay ratio and the LHA subtraction are not complete housing-cost budgets.
- The index chooses the Westmorland and Furness local-authority workplace pay figure as a common benchmark for all three town samples; it is not a separate pay estimate for each town. ONS also publishes ASHE workplace estimates by parliamentary constituency (Table 9), which this index does not use. No alternative geography estimate is substituted in this revision.
- ASHE median gross weekly pay is for full-time employees by place of work — what jobs in the area pay, not what residents earn. It is before tax, and it excludes the self-employed, part-time workers and anyone not in employment. It does not measure the incomes of room renters.
- The LHA shared accommodation rate is a published comparison benchmark here, not an individual benefit award or a cap on a landlord’s asking rent. Universal Credit usually applies the shared rate to eligible under-35s without a partner or children, with exceptions. Actual housing support depends on eligibility and circumstances; this subtraction does not calculate a claimant’s shortfall.
- The share of adverts at or below the LHA rate counts adverts, not rooms let, and ignores whether the landlord would accept a benefit claimant at all.
- First edition. There is no time series yet, so nothing here supports a change-over-time claim.
- We are a landlord in this market. Any of our own adverts present in the public results would be included in the rent side under the same counting rules. We do not exclude ourselves and we do not mark ourselves.
Why we publish this
We publish the rent snapshot and its source rows so readers can check and reuse the figures. Comparing those asking rents with published pay and the shared accommodation rate adds context, while keeping the inputs, dates and limitations visible. If you report on housing in Furness, you are welcome to use the data with a link.
Use a written quote for your own plans
A dated advert median or pay benchmark is not a quote for your stay or a personal budget. Use the printable quote worksheet to compare written quotes for the same dates, charged units, extras and terms. The room-viewing checklist and printable questions help you check the room, agreement and practical arrangements before deciding.
Looking for a room rather than writing about one?
Our rooms are from £135/week, all bills included. Tell us your preferred town, work location and move-in date on the interest list. We’ll contact you if a room suits your requirements.