Survey design services

Tender description

The Welsh Government has not conducted a property survey since 2008, meaning that we have a need to obtain updated data on housing conditions in Wales. A comprehensive review of evidence requirements has been undertaken and resulted in a recommendation to commission a new housing conditions survey to be run in 2017-18. The results of this survey will provide robust information on housing conditions and energy efficiency of homes in Wales. The housing conditions survey will be based on a sub-sample of addresses that have taken part in the new National Survey for Wales. The National Survey is a continuous annual survey of a random sample of 12 000 individuals across Wales. The housing conditions survey will need to be carried out in at least 2 500 dwellings and, additionally, a pilot survey will need to be completed before fieldwork begins. The inspections will require qualified housing surveyors to assess the dwellings and ask the householder a short set of questions. The Welsh Government has not conducted a physical property survey since the 2008 Living in Wales Property Survey, meaning that we have a need to obtain updated data on housing conditions in Wales. A comprehensive review of evidence requirements has been undertaken and resulted in a recommendation to commission a new housing conditions survey to be run in 2017-18. The results of this survey will be linked to a ‘dwelling spine’ — a comprehensive data base consisting of administrative data from multiple sources. The housing conditions survey will be based on a sub-sample of the new National Survey for Wales that was launched this year (April 2016). The new National Survey (for which the Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the current contractor) is a continuous random sample survey with an achieved sample of 12 000 people each year. The housing conditions survey will need to be carried out in at least 2 500 dwellings and a pilot survey (with an achieved sample of 50-100 dwellings) will need to be completed before the main fieldwork begins. The design of the housing conditions survey will be similar to that used in the Living in Wales Property Survey in 2008 and the English Housing Survey property inspections. The survey will be conducted in dwellings where, as part of the National Survey, householders have been identified as eligible and provided consent to a housing conditions survey, which will consist of a property inspection and some additional questions to be asked of the householder. Dwellings revealed by National Survey responses as rented (private and social) will be oversampled, and all dwellings identified as in visible disrepair (based on a basic visual inspection by the National Survey interviewer) will be asked for consent, with the remainder of the sample being made up of owner occupied properties with no visible disrepair. The sample of households who agree to take part in the physical survey will be provided to the contractor. The housing conditions survey will have the main aims of assessing certain features within the following categories: — Health and safety rating and hazards; — Accessibility and disabled adaptations; — Summary of fitness (for habitation); — Off grid fuels; — State of repair; — Energy efficiency or renewable energy installations and features etc. Therefore the inspections will require qualified housing surveyors who are able to assess properties according to these standards. There will also be a short set of questions that the surveyor will ask of the householder. The Welsh Government may wish to include income and housing costs questions as part of this questionnaire. The final survey design will be developed by the Welsh Government and delivered by the contractor. It is expected that the housing conditions survey will take around 50 minutes to complete. Fieldwork will run alongside the National Survey for Wales for Q2, Q3 and Q4 2017-18. It will possibly also continue for Q1 2018-19 if the contract is extended. Fieldwork for the physical survey is expected to begin 2-4 weeks after the beginning of the National Survey fieldwork (around mid/end July 2017) and end around mid/end April 2018. Data sets will need to be agreed within 6 weeks of the end of fieldwork and be in a format which can be easily linked with other data sets (e.g. administrative data included in the dwelling spine). The contractor will also be responsible for developing and running a series of programs and models to generate derived measures post-fieldwork including complex measures relating to energy efficiency and repair costs. Data produced by these models should be comparable to English Housing Survey data where applicable.