What is the Decent Homes Standard?

The Government believes everyone should have the opportunity to have a decent home.

It believes all homes should be warm, weatherproof with reasonably modern facilities and that they are a key element of any thriving, sustainable community.

To help achieve this it introduced the Decent Homes Standard to help social housing providers improve the condition of tenant's homes.

On the back of this scheme it aims to make all council and housing association housing decent by 2010 and to improve conditions in the private sector for vulnerable groups.

The delivery of this target is the responsibility of social landlords. The numbers of non-decent social homes will be reduced through a combination of investment by local authorities and housing associations, who need to quantify the level of non-decent housing in their stock and put in place plans for dealing with the problem.

For a property to be labelled a decent home it must meet certain criteria. It has nothing to do with location, floor level or size; the standard focuses on the health and wellbeing of the people who live within them.

If you feel that your property does not meet this standard, then it must be discussed with your landlord.

For further reading on the Decent Homes Standard, follow the links below:

• www.decenthomesstandard.co.uk (this is an external hyperlink)
• www.homesandcommunities.co.uk/housing/decenthomes (this is an external hyperlink)