Stock condition management overview

Stock condition surveys are a vital source of information for social landlords and local housing authorities, providing data that is important in validating progress against the Decent Homes Standard target and crucially to inform future asset management and investment programmes. There is also a legal requirement for local authorities to keep the conditions of their housing stock under constant review, helping to inform the vision for future housing structure as well as the allocation of resources. Substantial policy and spending decisions are based on the outputs from stock condition surveys and therefore careful consideration is given to their design, sampling regime, data collection methods and subsequent analysis. Increasingly, such surveys are carried out in-house, with social landlords recognising the value of gathering meaningful data through a rolling programme of surveys, providing relevant and timely asset management information. One of the main areas covered by the survey is property condition, which focuses on assessing the age and condition of all major internal elements within a dwelling, such as the kitchen and bathroom, as well as the external building structure, comprising the roof, windows, doors, wall covering, etc. One of the key outcomes of the survey is the ability to assign an estimated renewal year to each recorded item.

To facilitate the transfer of meaningful stock condition survey data onto individual asset records, a prescribed hierarchical element structure exists:

• Element - This is the top-level characterisation of a stock condition entry e.g. Roof, Central Heating, etc.
• Component - This field is used to capture the specific focus area from the stock condition survey e.g. Roof Structure, Gas Fired Central Heating, etc., and can be thought of as providing the sub-element detail.
• Attribute - The inherent feature of the component against which a future planned repair might be linked e.g. Reinforced Bitumen Membrane Flat Roof, Condensing Boiler, etc.

For each component relevant to a specific asset, the end user can record a repair element entry, detailing the nature of any future maintenance or replacement work to be undertaken, together with an assessment of its current lifespan, determined through the population of a 'year identified for replacement' field. As each repair element is linked to a standardised unit price, the total cost of the repair can be easily calculated through entry of the required quantity - limited by prescribed maximum and minimum threshold values specific to that repair type.

Separate help articles have been created for each key aspect of stock condition management, including:

• To create a new stock condition entry for an asset
• To define a stock condition attribute for an asset