Housing: housing quality and overcrowding

The link between poor-quality housing and health and wellbeing means that housing quality is an important health inequalities issue. In particular, cold and damp housing is associated with respiratory conditions and poor mental health and wellbeing. There is an ongoing need to raise and maintain the quality of existing housing across all tenures.

The Scottish Housing Quality Standard (SHQS) is a key measure of housing quality in Scotland. Currently, only social sector landlords are obliged to meet the SHQS, but data for all sectors are collected for comparison purposes. Chart 1 shows that a large proportion of dwellings across all tenures did not meet this standard in 2019. Failing the SHQS may be as a result of a single criterion, and does not necessarily mean that a dwelling has negative health implications, but it does provide an indication of quality and energy efficiency. Analysis by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has shown inequalities in housing quality according to this measure. Importantly, a number of dwellings in Scotland (around 24,000 in 2018) do not meet the ‘tolerable standard’ – meaning that the quality is such that it is not reasonable to expect people to live there. Shelter Scotland analysis shows that a significant proportion of housing in Scotland fails to meet their Living Homes Standard on grounds of space and quality.

Overcrowding relates to both affordability and quality of housing. There are marked inequalities in overcrowding (and in fact, it is one of the variables that comprise the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation). It can affect physical health, mental health and educational outcomes through several interrelated routes. In 2019, 51,000 Scottish households were defined as overcrowded according to the bedroom standard. Chart 2 shows that Housing Association households are most likely to be overcrowded according to this definition.