The Scottish Government

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Revisions

4 Housing Quality

42. The Scottish Housing Quality Standard ( SHQS) was announced by the Minister for Communities in February 2004 ¹⁴. All social landlords must ensure that all of their dwellings pass the SHQS by 2015. The SHQS consists of five criteria, the dwelling must:

• be above the statutory Tolerable Standard
• be free from serious disrepair
• be energy efficient
• have modern facilities and services
• be healthy, safe and secure.

Communities Scotland has further information on the SHQS¹⁵.

43. Estimates of failure rates from the 2002 SHCS were produced following the announcement. Fieldwork for the 2003/4 survey began in October 2003, before the final clarification of the SHQS in July 2004 ¹⁶. Thus the 2003/4 survey (and the 2002 survey) did not gather all the information required to fully assess dwellings against the SHQS. The surveys did not cover the following areas: number of sockets in kitchen, safety of gas and oil systems, kitchen layout, kitchen safety, kitchen storage and disrepair to attached garages. This was rectified in the 2004/5 survey in which all of these areas were included. Given the profile of failures across the SHQS criteria we believe the addition of this information would not materially affect the estimates of overall failure already published.

44. Approximately 69% of dwellings in Scotland failed the SHQS in 2004/5. This estimate is slightly lower than the rates of failure in 2002 (77%) and 2003/4 (71% ¹⁷) (Figure 8). The majority of dwellings that failed the SHQS failed on the energy efficiency criteria. Full central heating ¹⁸ is a strict requirement of these criteria and, in addition, houses with 'old style' electric storage heater will also fail as these are considered inefficient. The number of failures on the modern facilities and services criteria has increased slightly because of the additional information collected in 2004/5.

Figure 8: Scottish Housing Quality Standard 2002, 2003/4 & 2004/5

Table 15: Number of SHQS Failures 2002, 2003/4 & 2004/5

45. The proportions of dwellings with more than one criteria failure are roughly the same for all three survey years, with around 1 in 5 dwellings failing on more than one of the criteria (Table 15).

Table 16: SHQS by Tenure (000s)

Table 17 SHQS by Tenure (%)

46. The private sector shows higher failure rates in both 2003/4 and 2004/5 than the social sector, and that gap is widening. The Scottish Executive has stated that the entire stock of every social landlord must meet the criteria of the SHQS by 2015. Private owners and private landlords are currently under no obligation to bring their properties up to a standard which meets the SHQS. There has been a significant increase in the proportion of social sector dwellings passing the SHQS from 2003/4 to 2004/5; it is now at 37%.

Dampness and Condensation

47. Tables 18 and 19 indicate that very few dwellings in Scotland suffer from either rising or penetrating damp (1 in 25) whilst around 1 in 10 has condensation in at least one room. These figures are largely unchanged from those reported in 2002 and 2003/4.

Table 18: Presence of Condensation in Dwelling

Table 19: Presence of Rising or Penetrating Damp in Dwelling

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