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Introduction
1. The Scottish House Condition survey ( SHCS) is the only national survey of housing undertaken in Scotland. It combines both a physical inspection of dwellings and an interview with occupants to build a picture of Scotland's housing stock which covers all types of dwellings across the entire country, whether owned or rented, flats or houses.
2. This is the second Key Findings report to be produced since the SHCS moved to a continuous format in 2003. Prior to 2003 surveys were conducted in 1991, 1996 and 2002 and typically consisted of sample sizes of around 15,000 paired social and physical cases.
3. The continuous format was introduced to allow more flexibility of content and to assist in the monitoring of Ministerial targets. The 2003/4 and 2004/5 surveys gathered data from almost 4,000 households and dwellings with paired social and physical data available for around 3,000 of these. A similar sample size to the previous surveys (15,000 cases) should be achieved over a five year period.
4. The results presented here are based on fieldwork from October 2004 to September 2005. Given the relatively limited sample size compared to earlier surveys it is not possible at this stage to provide in-depth estimates for a number of topics. This report will instead set out key high-level national estimates relevant to a number of significant policy areas.
5. Updates are also provided to some figures for 2003/4 reported in Scottish House Condition Survey Key Findings for 2003/4 1. These updates have largely been made because of a change to the methodology regarding missing values. In the 2003/4 report, missing values were treated as a discrete category in each analysis, whereas in this report they have been apportioned pro-rata across the other categories. This has the effect of increasing the numbers reported in those categories. Updates to the 2003/4 figures are provided so that comparisons can be made across the years.
6. The report is divided into 5 sections:
- Key Stock Indicators - this covers issues such as tenure, dwelling age, type and size;
- Energy Efficiency - analysis of the energy efficiency of the housing stock is presented based on both the National Home Energy Rating ( NHER) and the Government's Standard Assessment Procedure for the Energy Rating of Dwellings ( SAP).
- Fuel Poverty - this section presents an analysis of the number and characteristics of households considered as being fuel poor in the 2004/5 period;
- The Scottish Housing Quality Standard ( SHQS) - this part of the report provides estimates of the number of dwellings passing and failing the SHQS. Figures are also given for dwellings with dampness and condensation.
- Notes and Definitions - The final section provides information about the content of the survey and the key concepts used in the document. Discussion on the reliability of the estimates is also included.
7. Care needs to be taken with the comparison of estimates from this report with those from the 2002 survey. Whilst some features of the survey have not altered, consisting, as it does, of a social interview with a physical inspection, the use of continuous year-round fieldwork is a fundamental change in the methodology and cannot be discounted as a possible explanation of change.
8. Further care must be taken in comparing numbers from the three survey years as the base number of dwellings is different for each. In 2002 the General Register Office for Scotland estimated that there were 2.192 million occupied dwellings in Scotland and the 2002 SHCS used this as the basis for published estimates. In 2003/4 the number of occupied dwellings increased to 2.269 million and in 2004/5 there was a further rise to 2.301 million. These increases can give the impression that more dwellings now fall into certain categories (more owner occupiers for example) but it is important, in all cases, to ensure that rises in absolute numbers are accompanied with rises in proportions as well.
9. The SHCS is a sample survey and so all survey figures are estimates of the true prevalence within the population. For some estimates, error bars and confidence intervals ( CI) have been provided to assist any analysis. Paragraphs 48-54 in the Notes and Definitions section provide further discussion of confidence intervals and errors associated with sampling.
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