Most people in Britain live in homes which are wind- and weather-proof, warm enough in winter, and which pose no serious threat to their health or safety. Yet house condition problems remain, and new problems are emerging. In 1996, around 1.8 million dwellings in Britain were officially unfit for human habitation or below the Scottish ‘tolerable’ standard, and the backlog of repairs was over £37 billion.

There are strong reasons to believe that these problems will get worse rather than better in the medium and longer term. The ageing of the dwelling stock, the growing proportion of very old owner-occupiers, and rising instability in jobs and personal relationships are likely to lead to an increase in the numbers of people who will find it difficult to keep up with the repair and maintenance which their homes need.

Certain localities - the inner areas of Northern and Midland cities and towns, the South Wales valleys, former mining areas, and declining coastal resorts - will bear the brunt of this decline. This threatens policies aimed at regenerating these areas and countering social exclusion. The findings of a programme of work looking at a wide range of repair and maintenance issues conclude that a new framework for renewal is needed based on:

Do poor housing conditions matter?

There are a number of reasons why the state should intervene to deal with poor housing conditions, but we need to be clearer about the case for intervention, especially when difficult choices have to be made. 

First, successive governments have accepted that households should have the right to housing which reaches a minimum standard in terms of condition, amenities and energy-efficiency. The current backlog of disrepair is unacceptable and there is a need to re-affirm this objective.

Second, there is a statutory obligation on the state to deal with very poor conditions and it will often be more cost-effective to intervene in a preventive way at an earlier stage. At present, the 'fitness standard', which is the trigger for intervention, is too subjective and ill-defined and there is a need for a sharper and more discriminating standard which picks out serious problems requiring urgent action.

Third, there is a growing awareness of the impact of poor housing conditions on health, which provides an increasingly important justification for state intervention. 

Finally, housing conditions are an important element of broader policies aimed at regeneration, tackling social exclusion, the provision of care in the community, and environmental sustainability.

The weakness of current policies

Current levels of public investment or policy action -whether through grant aid, enforcement action, demolition or other channels - are inadequate to tackle the scale of current problems. Grant aid is rationed, enforcement activity is too low and demolition of obsolete housing is almost at a standstill. The policy tools we are using were designed to operate with higher levels of public funding in a context where the problems of low incomes, deprivation and social exclusion were less serious and intractable. Although help is carefully targeted, the outcome is a lottery under which renovation policy delivers help to a fortunate few but little else to a much larger group of households with similar problems.

A rigid national legislative framework prevents the use of local discretion to develop new mechanisms which are more suited to the needs of local areas.

There is an understandable reluctance to move away from the provision of capital grants for those on low incomes to repair and improve their homes, to less generous measures requiring a higher level of private investment. Instead, resources are rationed ever more tightly and demand is managed through longer waiting times. We need a wide-ranging review of policy and a new, more realistic, framework for dealing with poor housing conditions.

A new framework

As a basis for effective housing renewal policies, we need a clear and coherent strategy for the future of the national housing stock. The first step is to develop a clear set of objectives relating to the condition of private sector housing, covering how the Government will deal with the present backlog of disrepair and future problems which are predicted to emerge; the different ways in which owners will be assisted to deal with house condition problems and the roles of public and private investment; and how many dwellings we may expect to replace in coming decades.

The national strategy will need to make clear the links between housing renewal investment and a range of wider policies. It will need to be consistent with regional and local strategies.

Given continuing pressures on public spending, it will be essential to use public resources as effectively as possible. This means spreading resources more thinly to help more of those in need and to attract more private investment. Options to achieve this include:

• targeting resources on a smaller number of local authority areas, or specific neighbourhoods;
• targeting resources on the private rented sector, which has the greatest concentration of condition problems;
• making grant aid conditional upon a significant level of private investment by applicants - and ongoing maintenance investment;
• giving only small grants for short-term solutions, in order to spread resources further; 
• replacing capital grants with financial assistance with loan charges, which are means-tested as at present;
• making demolition a less expensive option, by acquiring by agreement and placing more obligations on the owners of vacant and unwanted dwellings to persuade them to sell;
• making small loans for repair at minimal set-up cost, packaging such loans for commercial lenders to recycle capital, or guaranteeing loans to attract commercial lenders into this market;
• increasing the resources available for flexible tenure to enable those who cannot borrow to fund repairs by selling equity;
• removing legal and related obstacles to the provision of small loans by commercial lenders at minimum cost;
• promoting schemes to encourage low-income households to save for future maintenance costs or helping them to gain access to emergency repair and other insurance-based schemes;
• providing local authorities, registered social landlords (RSLs) and new community-based financial institutions with the legal framework to develop policy tools and mechanisms to spread public resources further and draw in more private investment.

Resources are not the only constraint on investment in repair and improvement, and there is a need to provide home-owners with encouragement and support with repair, maintenance and improvement work to their homes. Home improvement agencies offer a valuable service to vulnerable groups, but there is a need for the provision of less intensive services to other groups. These should include general information and advice on repair and maintenance, home repair surgeries, home surveys, help with diagnosis of problems and basic DIY tasks, 'handyperson' services, tool loan schemes, lists of reputable builders, and other services. Awareness could also be fostered by regular local campaigns on repair and maintenance issues.

More flexibility is needed to enable RSLs to work with local authorities and tailor their activities to meet particular objectives in relation to private sector renewal.

Possible roles include:

• partnership working with local authorities to deal with renewal problems in particular neighbourhoods;
• directly providing repair and maintenance services to home-owners for a fee;
• extending the role of home improvement agencies to provide a wider range of services;
• helping private landlords to meet their obligation to repair their properties by taking over their management;
• providing flexible tenure or equity loan arrangements. 

There are potential roles, too, for mortgage lenders in stimulating more private investment in housing renewal, including participation in measures to raise awareness; development of new survey products; further development of equity release mechanisms and repair and improvement loans; and partnerships with local authorities and RSLs to provide capital for onward lending for repair and improvement purposes.

Recent moves to deal with the 'cowboy' sector of the building industry are to be welcomed, but these need to be followed up with measures to improve training so that builders in this sector are multi-skilled and better able to work in a satisfactory way in people's homes, minimising disruption and disturbance from building works.

In the longer term, some broader reforms to the housing market might also be necessary to induce owners and buyers to take a more thorough view of the need for repair and maintenance. These include: requiring vendors to make a full survey available to potential purchasers (as the Government has recently proposed); making sellers responsible for latent property defects; and requiring lenders to take more account of disrepair.

There may also be a case for more extensive use of powers to compel owners to maintain their homes to a minimum standard, especially in the private rented sector. Realistically, however, measures of this kind are unlikely to prove acceptable in the short or even medium term.

There may be a need for mechanisms that help households which clearly cannot afford repair and maintenance costs to sell part or all of their equity to a social landlord and remain in the property as tenants, so that repairs can be carried out.

Despite deregulation of rents in 1988, the private rented sector still contains concentrations of housing in poor condition. The Government's proposals for licensing houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) are to be welcomed as a positive step towards improving conditions in this sector, but there may be a need to extend these to the non-HMO parts of the private rented sector, where conditions are poorest.

Recommendations

The proposals set out above are wide-ranging and longer term. In the short term, the following recommendations are made:

1 The Government should amend legislation to replace the present system of capital grants, either by grant aid to assist with borrowing costs, or by smaller grants conditional on association with borrowing (or investment by the applicant from another source) and provision for ongoing maintenance. As at present, this assistance should be based on an applicant's financial resources.

2 Within this overall framework, legislation should permit local authorities to develop policies which are best suited to local circumstances.

3 The legislation should enable the Housing Corporation and RSLs to play a major role in the renewal of private sector housing.

4 The Government and local authorities should, in partnership with lenders, remove obstacles to the commercial provision of small loans for repair and maintenance; and to the direct provision of loans targeted on low income households by local authorities, RSLs, or new financial institutions.

5 Local authorities should draw up realistic strategies for the renewal of private sector housing in their areas, based on an accurate assessment of needs and resources.

6 Local authorities should use their discretion to develop renewal policies which make the best use of public funding, and attract in as much private investment as possible.

7 Local authorities should take steps to promote awareness of repair and maintenance responsibilities and sources of funding for work, and to provide practical help to home-owners in identifying problems, securing funding, and carrying out work.

8 The Government should take the necessary steps to ensure that a complete national network of home improvement agencies is available to assist vulnerable groups with repairs, improvements and adaptations to their homes.

9 The Government should introduce legislation to require the licensing of houses in multiple occupation, and of categories of private rented housing where it can be demonstrated that conditions are generally poor, in order to secure minimum standards of condition and management.

10 The Government and local authorities should urgently review the framework of powers and mechanisms available to enable them to deal with poor conditions and widespread market failure in areas of older private housing.

About this study

This review, by Professor Philip Leather of Birmingham University, presents the findings of research on poor housing conditions and housing renewal policy supported by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

How to get further information

The full report, Crumbling castles? Helping owners to repair and maintain their homes by Philip Leather, is published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (ISBN 1 85935 055 0, price £12.95 plus £2 p&p).

Click on the 'order report' icon in the left margin to order online.

Click on the 'report .pdf' icon in the left margin to download a pdf of the full report free of charge. (File size is 0.71MB).

The following reports have been published from the programme. All these reports are available from York Publishing Services at the above address. The details of Findings (four-page research summaries) relating to the research projects are also given. All Findings can be viewed by following the links below.

Bailey, N. and Robertson, D. (1997), Management of flats in multiple ownership: Learning from other countries, The Policy Press (£11.95), Findings Ref: H226

Bradford Network (1999), Maintaining interest: How mortgage lenders can help home-owners maintain their homes, YPS (£10.95), Findings Ref: 9109

Davidson, M., Redshaw, J. and Mooney, A. (1997), The role of DIY in maintaining owner-occupied stock, The Policy Press (£11.95), Findings Ref: H220

Groves, R. and Niner, P. (1998), A good investment? The impact of urban renewal on an inner city housing market, The Policy Press (£11.95), Findings Ref: 698

Groves, R., Morris, J., Murie, A. and Paddock, B. (1999), Local maintenance initiatives for home owners: Good practice for local authorities, YPS (£12.95), Findings Ref: 459

Leather, P., Littlewood, A., and Munro, M. (1998), Make do and mend? Explaining homeowners’ approaches to repair and maintenance, The Policy Press (£11.95), Findings Ref: 598

McLean, S. (1999), Repairs for all: How social landlords can extend their repairs services to local home owners, YPS (£10.95), Findings Ref: 449

Oxley, M., Golland, A., Hodgkinson, S., and Maye, A. (1999), Financing homeowners’ repairs: Learning from Europe, YPS (£13.95), Findings Ref: 229

Pearce, J. and Wadhams, C. (1998), Uncommon currencies: LETS and their impact on property repair and maintenance for low income home owners, The Policy Press (£11.95), Findings Ref: 238