How long should housing last? Some implications of the age and probable life of housing in England

The housing stock in England is ageing. Furthermore, the long-term trend in house building indicates that the existing stock of housing is not being replaced within its design life. New houses are required largely to satisfy new demand in the form of increasing household formation. A key conclusion is that existing - and new - houses will have to last for many hundreds of years. The ownership of housing in England has changed significantly in recent years. The responsibility for maintaining and replacing the housing stock is increasingly in the hands of individual owner-occupiers who have little incentive or opportunity to replace it. The paper discusses some of the implications of these trends for those who design and construct new housing and for public policy makers. The paper concludes that further research is needed to explore the implications for construction, in particular, of the need to maintain and build housing which must last far longer than is usually envisaged.