Scottish House Condition Survey: 2023 Key Findings

The Chief Statistician has released figures on fuel poverty, energy efficiency, the condition of housing and other key descriptors of the occupied housing stock in Scotland. This is the first release of information from the Scottish House Condition Survey (SHCS) for 2023.

Fuel poverty

In 2023 an estimated 34% (around 861,000 households) of all households were in fuel poverty. This is higher than the 2022 fuel poverty rate of 31% (around 780,000 households).

19.4% (or 491,000 households of the 861,000 households in fuel poverty) were living in extreme fuel poverty in 2023 which is similar to the 18.5% (465,000 households) in 2022.

Energy Efficiency

In 2023, 56% of Scottish homes were rated as EPC band C or better under SAP 2012 . This is an increase of around 3 percentage points compared to 52% in 2022.

Under SAP 2009, which allows comparisons over a longer period, over half of dwellings (61%) were rated C or better, up 37 percentage points since 2010. In the same period, the proportion of properties in the lowest EPC bands (E, F or G) has reduced from 27% in 2010 to 8% in 2023.

Disrepair

In 2023, 27% of all dwellings failed the tolerable standard similar to 2022 (29%). The most common reason for failure of the tolerable standard was under the satisfactory equipment for detecting and warning in the event of fire criteria which 562,000 dwellings failed.

The Scottish Housing Quality Standard (SHQS) failure rate in the social sector was 38%. This has fallen from 60% in 2010. Failures of the Energy Efficient criterion were the biggest drivers of failures overall for the social sector. In 2023, 26% of social sector properties did not meet the Energy Efficient criterion

Disrepair to critical elements, which are central to weather-tightness, structural stability and preventing deterioration of the property, stood at 45% in 2023. Less than half of these (16% of all dwellings) required urgent disrepair to critical elements and just 2% had extensive disrepair (covering at least a fifth of the element area) to critical elements.

Overall, this is an improvement of 3 percentage points compared to 2022, when 49% of dwellings had disrepair to critical elements. The 2023 rate is the lowest since 2012.

Background

• The Scottish House Condition Survey is a sample survey, hence all figures are subject to a degree of uncertainty due to sampling variability. It is a two-part survey combining both an interview with occupants and a physical inspection of dwellings. The sample size in 2023 was 3,151 dwellings where both an interview and a physical survey were conducted.

Local authority estimates

• As previously advised, the enforced changes for the 2021 survey cause issues with the production of local authority estimates from the SHCS.

• Due to this we won’t be able to return to the usual approach for producing local authority estimates from the SHCS until the 2024 wave of the SHCS has completed. We will then be able to produce local authority estimates from the SHCS based on a three-year average for 2022 to 2024. We expect these estimates to be published in early 2026.

SHCS data on the UK data archive

• We will be depositing the microdata from the 2023 SHCS on the UK data archive and we will notify users when this is available.

Accessibility

• We have made changes to the key findings report to make it more accessible, particularly to the supporting tables.

• We would welcome feedback from users on these changes and any other aspects of outputs from the SHCS. We can be contacted by emailing shcs@gov.scot.

Accredited Official statistics are produced by professionally independent statistical staff in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics.