Residential stock condition survey code of practice

To encourage a sector-wide approach to collecting information about the standard of residents’ homes, we have supported the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) in their work to develop a new code of practice to create a standardised approach to carrying out surveys of housing stock.

The Better Social Housing Review recommended that social landlords improve how they collect and use data – both about the condition of the homes they manage and about who lives in them.

We responded with a programme of work called Knowing our Homes which found that, beyond assessing compliance with the Decent Homes Standard and other statutory obligations, there is not a consistent approach to collecting information during a stock condition survey.

We also found that housing associations are increasingly aiming to conduct 100% rolling stock condition surveys every five years, so it was clear that there was an opportunity to improve consistency in how we assess the quality of homes to make sure they’re as good as they can be for residents.

To encourage a sector-wide approach to collecting information about the standard of residents’ homes, we have supported the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) in their work to develop a new code of practice to create a standardised approach to carrying out surveys of housing stock.

RICS is now seeking feedback on this code of practice. This consultation is now open and I’d like to urge as many of you as possible to respond directly to RICS. The deadline for submitting responses is Monday 26 January 2026.

We expect the people best placed to respond to the consultation will be directors of assets/property, compliance teams, and those responsible for overseeing or commissioning your stock condition surveys. 

We will also submit our own response to the consultation informed by the views of our members. There are two ways you can feed into our response:

• Email us your feedback by Monday 12 January 2026 – you can respond to the consultation questions or share broader feedback.
• Join an online roundtable on Monday 12 January 2026 13:30-15:30. Please log in to get joining instructions.