By Colin Wiles, housing consultant.

The English Housing Survey has just released its latest figures for 2018/19 and there are some worrying figures for our sector. If you are not familiar with the EHS it started in 1967 as “a national sample survey, scientifically designed and carried out by skilled investigators…to provide reliable data on house conditions” and involves a sample survey of both homes and households.

The early surveys had an emphasis upon housing conditions. Did homes have a bath or shower, an indoor WC, a basin and hot and cold water at three points? In 1967 a quarter of homes lacked one or more of these basic amenities, and 2.5 million homes had no indoor WC. Today the number of homes lacking these basics is too small to measure so it shows how far we have come, but other problems have come to the fore – homelessness and affordability to name two.

In 1967, there were 14.8 million homes in England and all but 400,000 of these are still standing, so it also highlights the challenge of retrofitting them both to meet modern needs and to adapt to climate change.

There are now 24.2 million homes in England. Back in 1967 half of English homes were owner occupied – it’s now 63%. 29% were social rented (now 17%) and 20% were privately rented (unchanged). You can see all the figures here, but these are a few of the headlines that jumped out at me.

Three quarters of those aged 65 and over were outright owners but 43% of 16 to 34 year olds (almost six million young people) live with their parents or relatives. This inter-generational inequality is one of the major issues facing the country, I believe. Private renters have the
highest housing costs of £200 per week (33% of their income), followed by mortgagors (£172), then social renters (£96 a week for council tenants and £106 for housing association tenants).

Unsurprisingly, London has the highest housing costs with an average private rent of £341 per week. Mortgage payments in London averaged £242 per week. Private renters in London were spending 40% of their income on rent, compared to around 30% for social renters.

Over the last decade the number of non-decent homes has fallen from 7.4 million to 4.3 million and energy efficiency has improved from a SAP rating of 53 in 2008 to 63 now. A third of homes are now in the highest energy bands A to C, up from 9% in 2008. Again, signs of
real improvement.

And now the worrying bits, for our sector at least. The tables on satisfaction highlight some problems. Satisfaction with the neighbourhood is lowest for social renters. Overall, 89% of owners are satisfied with their local area and 6.3% dissatisfied, 86.9% of private renters are
satisfied and 6.5% are dissatisfied but 81.3% of social renters are satisfied and 11.2% dissatisfied. Social renters are also less satisfied with their accommodation than owners and private renters – 13% of social renters are dissatisfied compared to just 2.6% of owners and 8.7% of private renters.

But there is a particular problem with repairs and maintenance, and housing associations are doing much worse than local authorities. Overall satisfaction with repairs for housing association residents has decreased significantly – from 76.6% satisfied in 1995 to 66.3% in
2019 whereas satisfaction with council housing repairs went up slightly from 66% to 68.3% during these years.

Over the same period the percentage of council tenants dissatisfied with repairs declined from 28.2% to 22.5% whereas housing association dissatisfaction increased from 17.6% to 25.1%. How is it possible that housing associations, feather bedded with inflation-busting rent increases for years, can be doing worse than local authorities?

One possible answer might be the obsession within the housing association sector with growth and development rather than a focus on the basics. Almost twenty years ago, in 2001, I wrote an article for the now defunct Housing Today magazine titled “Dawn of the Monster
Age” in which I questioned the obsession with growth at all costs.

I asked “How long before we see the RSL with 50,000 units?” (!), and stated “My experience of large landlords is that they tend to be remote from their customers, poor at internal communications and struggle to provide a good service… At a time when the break up of large monolithic local authority portfolios is being actively pursued it seems strange that we are promoting the growth of even larger RSL landlords, which have both a fuzzier geographical focus and poorer levels of governance and accountability than their local authority counterparts… there is a valid argument to be made for breaking up large associations into smaller units in order that they can be more efficient and more responsive to local needs.”.

I don’t like to say, “I told you so”, but there is a debate to be had about the culture of mergers and growth at all costs. I was recently invited to join a Facebook group for disgruntled tenants of one of the largest housing associations and I can tell you that there is a lot of anger and dissatisfaction with the service they provide.

I am certain that this applies to many others. In the meantime all power to the English Housing Survey for highlighting these differences and providing some objective data about the state of our homes and the satisfaction of our residents.