Decent Homes

What is the Housing Decency Standard?

The 2000 Spending Review set a target to deliver decent social housing. This target was to "Ensure that all social housing meets standards of decency by 2010, by reducing the number of households living in social housing that did not meet these standards by a third between 2001 and 2004, with most of the improvements taking place in the most deprived local authority areas as part of a comprehensive regeneration strategy."

A home is decent if it meets four criterion:

1. It meets the current statutory minimum standard for housing.
2. It is a reasonable state of repair.
3. It has reasonable modern facilities and services.
4. Provides a reasonable degree of thermal comfort.

"A decent home is one which is wind and weather tight, warm and has modern facilities. It reflects what social landlords spend their money on. To set a nation target a common definition of decent is needed so all social landlords can work towards the same goal" - Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.

How Can Rand Associates Help?

Rand Associates is able to help at all stages of the process in achieving the decent homes target.

Establishing Your Position

Rands are able to offer a comprehensive range of methods for establishing current decency.

Site Inspection	Our teams of surveyors are able to inspect a sample selection of the stock in a consistent and quality controlled manner. This assessment can then be incorporated into an existing Stock Condition Survey.
Desk Top Analysis	The current decency can be assessed by analysing historic data for the stock. Confidence levels for the decency are also produced determined by coverage and type of historic data.
Retrospective Interrogation	Existing Stock Condition Surveys can be used to do a Retrospective Interrogation and a current decency level extrapolated.

Storing/Managing the Data

Rands have a highly developed easy to use software system for storing and managing housing data.

Each property is stored by its own unique UPRN (provided either by us or the client) and coexists seamlessly with envelope data for the properties. New data can easily be integrated into the system and added to existing data.

Reports and data exports can be produced easily from the software for the client, dealing with multiple failures, envelope data, and potential future failures.

Hitting the Targets

The government has set strict targets for housing decency, "A third of all currently non-decent properties will be made decent by April 2004." And, "No property will be non-decent by 2010." In order to meet these targets a consistent and realistic approach is needed.

By interrogating our software system Rands can establish the current position of decency and develop a realistic long term plan by taking a large number of factors into consideration. For example, are there sufficient resources to achieve the targets? Will all components have to be replaced? Can other non decency related components be deferred?

Monitoring Progress

It is important to monitor the progress made toward the decency homes standard. When a component replacement is carried out, or similar operation, it may or may not have an impact on decent homes.

Rands can offer a monitoring service by organising an efficient means of collecting the data, collecting the data itself and ensuring quality control. This data can then be integrated into the data already existing for the properties.