Policies, Strategies and Standards

 

The 2004 Eastleigh Borough (private sector) House Condition Survey (HCS)   was conducted in order to produce a comprehensive review of current stock conditions in the private sector and this report presents the findings of the HCS.

 

This report will examine what the conditions of dwellings within the Borough are like and what direction future private sector housing policies may need to take.  The latter point is of particular importance as, under the new Regulatory Reform Order, local authorities will now be responsible for deciding what sources of funding to use and what schemes to set up, in order to tackle private sector housing problems, with an unprecedented degree of freedom.

 

The survey was carried out on 1,000 dwellings within the Borough. The total private sector housing stock of the Borough is an estimated 41,720 dwellings.  This excludes all local authority dwellings (now transferred) and those recently sold under right-to-buy for which survey information is already available, it also excludes any other housing association dwellings.  The total is based on the weighted results of the survey and is an estimate at the time of the survey.  Giving a precise figure to the dwelling is unnecessary as dwellings are constantly being converted and built, such that the total number of dwellings changes on an almost daily basis.

 

The age profile of the private sector stock from the survey suggests that the stock is more modern than the position for England with more post 1964 dwellings and with fewer dwellings built before 1919.  There are more detached houses in Eastleigh than is the case for England as a whole and a higher proportion of dwellings are owner occupied.  A stock profile such as this would tend to suggest that better than average stock conditions would exist, as poor condition is strongly associated with age of dwelling, with houses converted into flats and with the privately rented sector.

 

A wide variety of issues relating to the condition of dwellings in Eastleigh were collected from the survey and produced in subsequent analysis.  The table overleaf summarises many of the key findings from the survey by the three main tenure types.