An empirical approach to the evaluation of factors in local authority housing maintenance requirements in the City of Manchester

Olubodun, OF

Abstract

The thesis is concerned with the evaluation of factors in Local Authority housing maintenance requirements in the City of Manchester. Since 1982, expenditure in housing maintenance and repair works has consistently accounted for more than 50% of total expenditure on maintenance and repair work. In turn, maintenance and repair work accounts for almost 50% of total construction output in the UK. Given this level of sectorial contribution, it is apt to understand the factors which affect defects in dwelling buildings and hence maintenance requirements. This thesis reviews the catalogue of building defect causative factors
leading to the conclusion that social and tenants' characteristics are equally important. The study is based, chiefly, on a postal questionnaire survey of building surveyors involved in day-to-day identification of defects as well as tenants of the sampled dwellings; and computer cost records of maintenance on dwellings within the sample.
A total of 45 completed questionnaires from building surveyors, and 252 Council tenants with corresponding computer cost records formed the data base for the analyses conducted. The building surveyors' questionnaire assisted in the identification of defect-cause criteria which relate to the internal attribute of the dwelling building. The consistency of the resulting data was confirmed by the use of Kendall Coefficient of Concordance. An analysis is described of the manipulated data set using regression analysis. The analysis found that Changing standard contributes (38%) of (building structure related
factors') impact on maintenance requirement variance, construction factors (23%), design factors (22%), vandalism (12%) and age factors (6%). The intercorrelations among these five defect-cause criteria within the building object necessitated further analysis using the principal component analysis. This resulted in the extraction of nine significant factors showing how the initial five factors combine to exert their influence on the building. In all, this family of building structure related factors contribute 32% of the variation in maintenance requirements.
Combining the data from the tenants' questionnaire, computer cost information and dwelling survey, regression model testing was employed to identify the significant
factors. This was facilitated with the use of three indices of housing maintenance requirements as the dependent variables, namely; reactive maintenance cost, property
condition and satisfaction among tenants. Nine factors (six of which relate to tenant's characteristics) pertaining to tenant, environmental and housing management were significantly influential.

Citation

Olubodun, O. An empirical approach to the evaluation of factors in local authority housing maintenance requirements in the City of Manchester. (Thesis). University of Salford

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Jul 8, 2009
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 8, 2009
• Additional Information: Additional Information : PhD supervisor: Trevor Mole
• Award Date: Dec 1, 1996