By Claire Donovan, Head of Policy, Research & Campaigns at End Furniture Poverty

Flooring is the single most expensive item on End Furniture Poverty’s list of essential furnishings, and the second highest on the list of items people are living without.

Yet, sadly, it’s still standard practice for many social landlords to routinely rip out good-quality flooring as part of their void processes and move tenants into properties with bare concrete floors.

There can be valid issues such as a need to check flooring underneath carpets or concerns about dirt or contaminants left in flooring, but, in these cases, landlords should just relay flooring and properly clean. We believe that in the majority of cases good-quality flooring could be left in-situ with simple cleaning processes.

We also believe that landlords should go a stage further and where flooring has to be removed, or if there’s no flooring, it should be installed as standard in all new lets. This is Thirteen Group’s approach and they have achieved impressive results with reduced rental arrears and void costs, and increased tenancy sustainability.

Our research shows that six million people in the UK are living in furniture poverty, including 26% of social housing tenants. 1.2m people are living without flooring and 760,000 of those are social housing tenants. Too many people are moving into social housing with nothing, and when you need appliances, beds and sofas, flooring tends to be at the bottom of the list, as the average cost of installing flooring in a three-bed property is well over £1,000.

Changes to the Decent Homes Standard in Wales now mean that adequate flooring will have to be provided in every room in social housing properties (and private rental, too). This is a vital development that should be replicated across the rest of the UK. The Welsh government is providing financial support for this, and we believe it will be money well invested, helping to ultimately sustain tenancies and reduce rental arrears as tenants are living in a home, not a cold box, and are no longer turning to high-cost credit to floor their properties.

There are major projects underway across social housing to retrofit properties and improve insulation, while tenants live with cold concrete floors, in those retrofitted properties.

We must join up the dots; we must recognise that social housing tenants need adequate flooring for health and safety, for comfort, for insulation and to prevent antisocial behaviour problems with noise issues in flats.

There are a number of pilot projects using used carpet tiles from commercial properties, and while we agree that any flooring is better than no flooring, and reuse is so important, we believe this reuse should focus on communal areas of shared accommodation properties and not domestic properties. The costs of installation and logistics with preloved carpet tile projects tend to be very similar to installing new flooring and we always ask the question, Would I want this in my home?

We urge all landlords to treat flooring in the same way they would a boiler or a front door – it should be part of the fabric of the property and always provided.