| Summary: | Not only is housing a major activity, in which the building industry plays a significant role in the life cycle of the housing stock, but today, society is becoming aware of its dependency on scarce resources particularly "energy constraints", rising construction costs and a growing dissatisfaction with housing standards. It was against this background that this study was carried out. This work :- (i) traces the growth of G.B.'s housing stock from 1800 to the present time and discusses briefly those historical and current influences which have shaped its condition, state and housing standards, (ii) ." . included an extensive field impression survey to identify how dwellings aged or decayed and failed and how long did a differing construction form survive. (iii) discusses the fiscal life in the public sector Which, may be taken as sixty years and questions how long a dwelling lasts. What constitutes unfitness, and housing standards are also briefly reviewed. (iv) examines, what causes a dwelling to fail; modes of failure, significance of failure patterns whether attributed to twilight areas, physical ageing, economic, functional or social obsolescence or technical failures or due to other shortcomings, e.g, in legislation, design, manufacture, tenure, construction form or maintainance standards. (v) considers the difficulties of differing decay rates, mismatch of component/material life to a dwelling life and their significance on survivorship are explored. Likewise the problem of an ageing housing stock and early failure of newer forms of construction are con- sidered with Government policy favouring rehabilitation in preference to clearance. (vi) highlights the significance of the dwelling stock state for the future and considers the mean stock age, replacement and clearance years with the implication of changing legislative and preference standards with a stock which cannot be replaced in one's life time. (vii) involved developing a methodology of both appraising the housing stock's physical status and setting up likely future levels of build and clearance to highlight the problem of mismatched clearance to replacement year ratios and the need to consider how will society (xii)
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