The Cost of Poor Housing in London: Housing Research Note 11

Many of the capital's homes are in poor condition, affecting the occupants, the NHS and society more widely. The Greater London Authority has produced this Housing Research Note as part of their series of analytical reports focusing on individual issues of relevance to housing policy in London.

The report estimates the annual cost to the NHS of homes in poor condition in London as well as the cost of repairing all the homes in London that are in poor condition and calculating how long it would take the savings to pay off the repair costs. The analysis is broken down by tenure and compared with the same figures for the rest of England.

This research applies a methodology developed by the Building Research Establishment (BRE) to London’s housing, using data on the condition of the city’s housing stock that comes from the English Housing Survey. It details estimates that it would cost £1,203.8m to repair London’s poor housing across all tenures and that the per annum cost to the NHS of poor housing in London is £100.1m.The tenure breakdown of this analysis highlights the disparity of housing quality across different tenures in London.