A standard stock condition survey for all social housing landlords

The social housing sector exists to provide good, safe, and affordable homes to people in housing need. In the run up to the election, and now with the new government, the NHF has been working to demonstrate that building more, good quality, affordable homes is positive both for the people who need them, and for the wider economy.  

Earlier this year, research we commissioned together with Shelter found that the next government could add £51.2bn to the economy by investing in 90,000 social homes. The Building Research Establishment found that remedial work to England’s poorest housing could provide £135.5bn in social benefits over 30 years. 

We have been working with the new government to make this potential a reality, and the ambitious goal to build 1.5m new homes in this Parliament is encouraging. Alongside this, our sector is also ambitious to improve the quality of its existing homes. According to the Good Home Inquiry, there are 10 million people living in homes (of all tenures) that don’t meet the Decent Homes Standard. While the proportion of these homes in the social housing sector is smaller than those in the owner-occupied sector, in 2022 there were still 10% of the social rented sector’s homes that did not meet the standard.   

The Better Social Housing Review recommended that social landlords improve how they collect and use data – both about the condition of the homes they manage and about who lives in them. We’ve been developing our work around this through Knowing our Homes and have heard from housing associations about how they currently gather and use this data. We’ve found this incredibly helpful to understand the range of approaches, and we’ll be sharing more examples of good practice with you over the coming weeks and months. We also found it helpful to understand the challenges in this area, so that our proposals address these in a deliverable way, while also building on best practice. 

One of our key findings is that, beyond assessing compliance with the Decent Homes Standard and other statutory obligations, there is not a consistent approach to collecting information during a stock condition survey. We also found that housing associations are increasingly aiming to conduct 100% rolling stock condition surveys every five years, so it’s clear that there is room for improving consistency in how we assess the quality of homes to make sure they’re as good as they can be for residents.   

Developing a first of its kind standardised stock condition survey 

To support a sector-wide approach to collecting information about the standard of homes, the NHF is really pleased to be working in partnership with the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), to develop a first of its kind standardised stock condition survey. We’ve participated in initial discussions with housing associations and local authority landlords, and we’ll be working alongside our members, as well as other social landlords through the Local Government Association, National Federation of ALMOs and the Association of Retained Council Housing, to develop this work over the coming months. We’ll make sure there are opportunities for all of our members to shape this work. We will also be seeking the views of social housing residents to make sure their experience is taken into account. 

Throughout Knowing our Homes, we’ve heard about the importance of ensuring proposals are deliverable and in line with upcoming changes to regulatory requirements including, for example, to a new Decent Homes Standard. Our discussions with RICS and social landlords so far have focused on this, as well as the importance of ensuring surveyors can also raise concerns about anything they haven’t been specifically asked to consider.  

While the standard won’t be mandatory, we hope to make it useful and practicable enough that housing associations across the board will want to adopt it. This project should bring wider sector benefits too, including helping us to build trust with residents and wider stakeholders that we understand our homes and how they’re working for residents, and supporting us to make the case for additional investment. 

We’re confident that this collaboration between surveyors and the social housing sector will deliver an approach that ensures social landlords can effectively and efficiently achieve their goals on improving the quality of residents’ homes. You’ll hear more from us as this work progresses, but we welcome your feedback at any time.