App configuration: region and housing standards
The Region & standards tab is the first tab in App configuration. It sets where your organisation houses people, which UK nation a case falls under when its property has none, and which housing standards checklists your surveyors fill in.
What it is
Region is one of the twelve regions HousingSurvey Pro supports: the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, India and South Africa. The field app uses it for spelling, units, address lookup and its Standards & Regulations library, and new cases follow its rules.
Inside the United Kingdom each case follows its nation’s statutory timescales: Awaab’s Law in England, the Welsh Housing Quality Standard’s element 1c in Wales, and the damp and mould timescales in force in Scotland from 6 October 2026. HousingSurvey Pro doesn’t calculate statutory repair deadlines for Northern Ireland. Outside the UK no region has a statutory deadline for investigating and repairing damp and mould like Awaab’s Law, so a case never shows a statutory clock: it runs on the due date you set, and the case, report and PDF say what governs repairs there instead.
Default nation for statutory clocks (UK only) is used for a new case when its property has no nation of its own.
Housing standards checklists add a Housing Standards step to the field app for the cases each one applies to:
| Checklist | Applies to | On by default |
|---|---|---|
| Tolerable Standard (Scotland) | Cases in Scotland | Yes |
| Repairing Standard (Scotland) | Cases in Scotland, for private landlords | No |
| Fitness standard (Northern Ireland) | Cases in Northern Ireland | Yes |
| Alarms and electrical safety (Wales) | Cases in Wales | Yes |
| Rented Houses Standards (Ireland) | Ireland | Yes |
| Healthy homes standards (New Zealand) | New Zealand | Yes |
| Rental minimum standards (New South Wales) | Australia | No |
| Minimum housing standards (Queensland) | Australia | No |
The Victoria rental minimum standards and the HUD NSPIRE affirmative requirements have their own steps and are switched on here too: Victoria for Australia and NSPIRE for the United States.
How to do it
- Open Settings → App configuration. It opens on Region & standards.
- Pick your Region. A new region switches on its own default checklists.
- In the UK, pick a Default nation if most of your homes are outside England.
- Tick the Housing standards checklists you want surveyors to fill in, and untick any you don’t.
- Click Save changes.
The onboarding wizard’s Region step sets the region too, and suggests the currency, date format and temperature unit that go with it.
How it integrates
A case created after a change follows the new setting; existing cases keep the rules they started with, and a running statutory clock never moves. An overseas case carries its region, so it keeps its own rules even if the setting changes later. The checklists apply to surveys started after the change: a survey already open keeps the settings it was opened with, and a draft that already has a checklist recorded keeps it. A sealed record always shows what it recorded.
Scotland and Northern Ireland don’t use HHSRS, so the HHSRS step starts hidden on their cases. It stays if your organisation requires it (Data collection) or the draft already has a score.
Common problems
- The Housing Standards step isn’t in the field app. Check that a checklist for the case’s nation or region is ticked and saved, update the field app, then close and reopen the survey.
- A case outside the UK shows no statutory deadlines. That’s correct: set a due date on the case. The report explains what governs repairs in your region.
- We want a checklist for another state or province. Tell us at support@housingsurvey.pro. Until then, record the standard in the room findings and comments.
Related