Jake Parks looks at the flooring crisis in social housing and suggests IVC Commercial’s housing solutions are a cost-effective and durable option for providers.
While regulations in Wales stipulate social housing providers must provide suitable floor coverings in every room of the home, there are no such conditions for social housing in England and Scotland, other than in bathrooms and kitchens. This lack of regulation often sees tenants enter housing with bare floors.
The Longleigh Foundation, a grant-making body that supports residents in the social housing sector, recognises the financial, emotional and social impact on tenants from homes with a lack of floor coverings. It also found that more than 760,000 adults living in social housing have no flooring in bedrooms or living areas1 .
Outside of the ongoing regulatory review in England which may impose change, there is a clear need for providers to respond to this crisis by improving the provision of flooring in social housing. However, providers have concerns over the affordability of replacement at changes of tenancy, as well as concerns around health and hygiene issues of leaving existing floorings in place.
In its report, ‘Floored: Provision of Appropriate Flooring in Social Housing’, Tai Pawb, an organisation advancing equality and social justice in housing in Wales, highlights this reluctance even with providers keen to improve void standards:
‘(We) have invested significantly in improving our voids standard over the past 18 months. Our average expenditure on void properties is currently circa £8,000 as we want to create sustainable tenancies. Due to significant additional investment, we couldn’t afford another £1,500 – £2,000 per property to install flooring/carpets throughout.’
For those providers that want to make a positive change to the financial, emotional and social wellbeing of their tenants by improving their floor covering provision, our compact and textile-backed sheet vinyl floors are a cost-effective and durable solution that overcome many concerns.
Sheet vinyl is an ideal product for social housing for its ability to support tenants with a comfortable and homely floor covering while also addressing the concerns of providers around the cost of purchase and installation, durability, ongoing maintenance and hygiene.
For private areas, our textile-backed Zenura products are superb. With fast, glue free installation and the ability to be installed directly on top of old floors and subfloors with imperfections, they reduce the expense of installation in both new build and void refurbishments. Costs are further reduced by using the same flooring throughout all areas of accommodation. The textile backing also helps to provide tenants with underfoot comfort and improved acoustics in a range of textured wood, stone and material designs.
Across the board, they also provide a minimum R10 slip resistance and come with PU lacquer that makes them easier to look after using normal cleaning routines. Improving stain and scratch resistance, the lacquer also helps to extend the life of the floor, so that it might not even need to be replaced at change of tenancy. With a water-resistant, seamless and joint-free finish from multiple roll widths, worries on hygiene are also eliminated as there’s nowhere for dirt or bacteria to harbour on the surface. Our Zenura Ultimate also comes with a 20 year warranty for residential use, ensuring a floor that is capable of withstanding daily use – it’s rated Class 33 so deemed suitable for heavy commercial use.
There is a real need for us to work as an industry and encourage providers to think more about the provision of floor coverings within social housing. By recommending the benefits of compact and textile backed sheet vinyl flooring throughout the home, as opposed to just kitchens and bathrooms, contractors and installers can play an active role in improving the lives of social housing tenants.
www.ivc-commercial.com
Jake Parks is national sales manager – commercial for IVC
1 ‘The Provision of Floor Coverings in Social Housing’, Longleigh Foundation, May 2024; https://longleigh.org/
2 ‘Floored: Provision of Appropriate Flooring in Social Housing’, Tai Pawb, October 2020, https://www.taipawb.org/