New housing 'will have to last longer than the Pyramids' says report

It shows that if the present level of clearance was allowed to continue, houses built today would not be replaced for 2,800 years before they were demolished. In England and Wales, where clearance levels are lowest, new homes would theoretically have to stand for 5,600 years - longer than the current age of Stonehenge or the oldest Egyptian pyramid.

Drawing together data from England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, the report also finds that:

• Over 1.6 million homes in the UK - one in 14 - have been officially rated by government criteria as unfit for human habitation or fall below the tolerable standard. A government survey found the worst problems in Wales where one in eight occupied properties were considered unfit.
• A large minority of properties require urgent repairs. Almost one in five homes in England were assessed as needing more than £1,000 worth of urgent remedial work. Nearly one in ten Scottish homes were found to need repairs costing over £3,000. In Northern Ireland, the comprehensive repair bill for as many as one in four dwellings was put at more than £5,000 each.
• Low income households suffer disproportionately from inadequate housing. In 1991, six out of ten households in unfit homes had incomes below £8,000 a year (roughly half the national average income).
• Converted flats and terraced houses were the most likely types of dwelling to be judged unfit in England. Problems were most often found in North East Lancashire, Manchester, Liverpool, Calderdale and cities in the Midlands. Unfit homes were less common in the South, but Bristol, Bath and parts of London had above average levels.
• In Scotland, poor conditions were concentrated in privately owned properties in Glasgow and in rural areas such as Western Isles, Argyll, Skye, Ross and Cromarty, Lochaber and Orkney.
• Detached homes in rural areas presented the most problems in Northern Ireland. Unfitness was also a significant problem in parts of rural Wales. However, terraced homes in the industrial valleys were the most likely of all Welsh housing stock to be in poor condition.
• The number of home improvement grants to private home owners has fallen to a third of its peak level during the early 1980s. Welsh local authorities have maintained a higher rate of grant provision than elsewhere.
• Receipts from the sale of council houses have enabled local authorities to fund improvements to their remaining stock of homes. Renovation work on council estates in the 1990s has been running at nearly three times the level in the private sector. Rehabilitation work by housing associations has declined following changes in public subsidy arrangements under the 1988 Housing Act.
• Average annual spending on home repairs and improvements by owner >occupiers has fallen in recent years as a result of recession in the housing market.

The report's authors, Prof. Philip Leather and Tanya Morrison of South Bank University, found the likelihood of a house being declared unfit increased sharply if it was built before 1919 - although there were significant levels of unfitness in Scottish and Welsh properties dating from the 1920s and 1930s.

Prof. Leather said: "The country's housing stock is ageing and in older dwellings especially there is a constant need for investment to deal with disrepair. Housing professionals agree that the rate at which old and unfit homes are being replaced is too low. But the high proportion of owner-occupiers makes demolition difficult and expensive. Many people do invest in housing renovation but they often concentrate on more cosmetic types of work such as new kitchen units rather than essential repairs." He added: "Low income households are very dependent on local authority grants, but new legislation means it is no longer mandatory for English and Welsh councils to make these available to householders. This will relieve the pressure on local authority budgets, but it may also lead to further cutbacks in urgent housing repairs. In the absence of alternative measures to encourage private owners and landlords to carry out renovation, there is a strong likelihood that housing conditions for many low-income owners and tenants will deteriorate."