The hidden hazards of DIY laziness could be shocking

Kirsty Mcluckie on the costs of keeping your home safe

An alarming study published this week suggests that the average British home needs more than £24,000 of repairs. Is this likely? I am aware that my own property needs more than a little attention.

After 12 years of living in our place, with a husband whose DIY competence ranks only slightly above my own exceptionally poor talents, two accident-prone teenagers, a cat who uses the furniture as scratching posts and a dog with unspeakable personal habits, I feel that £24,000 would merely be the starting point for fixing the house up to a sellable standard.

But I generally find other’s homes a lot more well presented than mine.

Other people tend not to have mouldy wooden kitchen worktops, gruesome water stains on their ceilings or extractor fans that haven’t worked for 11-and-a-half years.

But £24,000 is the average cost of the nation’s disrepair, according to the website myjobquote.co.uk.

A poll by the company found homeowners admitting that they simply can’t afford to get the work done to keep their house in good working order.

Common issues plaguing homeowners range from small household maintenance jobs such as leaky taps to more concerning problems like outdated plumbing and faulty electrics.

More than half of homeowners state that they are running a dangerous risk every day in their own homes.

The team undertook the research as part of an ongoing study into the different trades that are currently most in demand among British households.

A total of 2,581 homeowners took part in the survey, and all of them had lived in their property for a minimum of five years and shared it with at least one child.

Respondents were asked to identify from a list any repair jobs their homes currently required, revealing that 48 per cent of homeowners had dodgy plug sockets, 43 per cent had frozen or leaky taps and 31 per cent had broken windows in their home.

More than half admitted that they believed there were potentially dangerous risks in their home.

By comparison, just one in ten stated that they had no repair requirements at all.

When asked if they had experienced any dangers in their home due to its state of disrepair, 29 per cent had slipped, tripped or fallen, a quarter had come into contact with falling items such as shelves or other furnishings and 17 per cent stated that they had sustained an electric shock.

A further 7 per cent stated that they had fallen through floorboards, which rather paints a picture of hapless homeowners, living a sort of Frank Spencer-style existence of risking life and limb as soon as they get up in the morning.

When asked what was delaying them getting the repairs done, the majority confessed that they simply couldn’t afford to fix their home, while others stated that they kept forgetting to get it sorted or that they were waiting for someone else in the household to fix it.

In my experience, those respondents are likely to have a long wait, but at least the report has left me feeling much better about the state of my own house.

It might not be a showhome, but it doesn’t seem to be actively trying to kill me.