Wales has just passed regulations that new social lets must come with flooring included. But with hundreds of thousands of families across the UK still living in social homes without carpet and flooring, should English and Scottish social landlords follow suit?
Research this year by End Furniture Poverty found that 1.2 million UK adults are living without flooring in their home, of whom almost two-thirds – or 760,000 adults – are social housing tenants.
The new Welsh Housing Quality Standard will mandate that all social lets must include flooring, but it remains to be seen whether Scotland or England will follow suit. Standard practice across most of the social rented sector is not to include carpet or flooring in new lets, and many rip out flooring from previous tenants. Many new tenants are taking on debt to pay for it, or else living in cold, unwelcoming homes. But when those in social housing are among the country’s poorest, why is flooring not included with new tenancies, and how is this lack of provision affecting people?
Likewise Group PLC (LON:LIKE) is a distributor of floorcoverings and matting and has the opportunity to consolidate the domestic and commercial floorcovering markets to become one of the UK’s largest distributors in this sector.
