How secure is your household?

The check comprises twelve questions and takes about four minutes. It estimates how likely your household is to struggle to afford food or heating, using research from a survey of 2,886 Londoners.

You do not need to create an account. Your answers are only used to make the prediction and are never stored.

2,886

Londoners surveyed

13

Factors weighed

33

Boroughs covered

2

Outcomes assessed

How it works

Answer twelve questions

The questions cover who you live with, work, money, wellbeing and your borough. You do not need to provide exact figures.

Our models weigh your answers

Your answers are sent to our server, where two models trained on the survey estimate your risk for food and for energy. They are used only for that prediction and never stored.

Get both results and the reasons

You get a score out of 100 for food and for energy, the factors that moved each one most, and a list of organisations that can help if a risk is high.

The research

Built from 2,886 London households

In late 2022 the OLIO survey asked 2,886 Londoners about money, housing, wellbeing and their local area. Fieldwork ran from 22 November to 5 December 2022 and covered all 33 boroughs. Food security was measured with the USDA food security module, which places each household at one of four levels, from high to very low.

The survey found half of households, 49.9 percent, at some level of food insecurity. For energy the figure was 47.1 percent, and 36.8 percent were struggling on both.

We trained models on the survey to estimate those levels from thirteen factors. Food uses a CatBoost model, energy uses XGBoost. This tool runs the same models on your answers, then shows both scores and the factors behind them.

What the model can’t do

  • It is not always right. On test data the food model picks the exact severity level for about 59 percent of people and lands within one level about 82 percent of the time. The energy model is right about 53 percent of the time.
  • It only knows the twelve answers you give it. It is a screening estimate, not financial or medical advice.
  • No benefit office, lender or landlord will ever see your result.

Your answers are used once, then gone.

Your answers are sent to our server to make the prediction. They are never stored and never shared. There is no account and no tracking.