North Prospect Home Owners

Damned if you ......Damned if you don`t

Home owners are being offered a free survey of their Properties by Plmouth Community Homes. The purpose of the survey is to see if those homes meet the EU - Decent Homes Standards. Why PCH should be interested at all in privately owned properties at all can only be assumed that they already know the houses will fail on at least two requirements. Therefore can be confirmed as not meeting the required standards and unfit for repair. Rest assured those people who refuse the survey can probably expect their houses to be assessed by association to similar or adjacent houses.

So it boils down to the fact that if you consent to a survey you may well making it easy for them to condemn your home. Alternatively if you refuse the survey PCH can get around this by surveying similar houses that they own and if for example a row of 10 houses 7 of which are surveyed and found to be beyond economical repair, it would be reasonable to assume that the remaining 3 privately owned homes not surveyed will also fail for the same reasons.

You can read the criteria for the EU Decent Homes Standards and you will see if you are honest with yourself the ways in which your home will fail to meet the standard regardless of how well you have taken care of it.

 

To find out exactly what the Decent Homes Standards is all about and how it is used to assess buildings click here. Be sure to take a look at this whole 28 page document as the last few pages give an idea of what particular aspects they will use to assess a property.

IN CONCLUSION: I am under no illusion that my own home would not pass the standards set out in these documents as it is now. Yet it is a decent comfy home just like yours. In truth, not many other than recent new builds, would pass it.