Block Management in Ilfracombe

The most flatted place in this entire research, and by some distance. At the 2021 Census 1,707 of the 5,041 households across the two Ilfracombe wards were flats, 33.9 per cent. Ilfracombe East is the outlier: 1,350 of its 3,111 households are flats, 43.4 per cent, and 723 of those, more than half, are not purpose-built, being 434 in a converted or shared house, 150 in another converted building and 139 over commercial premises. Converted or shared house flats alone account for 13.95 per cent of households in that ward against 3.5 per cent for England, four times the national rate. The conservation area appraisal explains the cause directly: large Victorian terraces were used as guest houses and later as apartments and bedsits, and it names the subsequent subdivision of those properties as the source of the town's parking pressure. For a managing agent that means shared demises, non-standard compartmentation and contested responsibility for structure, at a density found nowhere else in the South West covered here.

Class 4 to 5, the highest of the north Devon towns in this research. Six of the kilometre squares over the town return class 4 at 5 to 10 per cent and nine return class 5 at 10 to 30 per cent, and both ward centroids sit in class 5. The council itself publishes no figure, noting only that levels vary even from house to house in the same street.

In a block the part worth attention is the enclosed communal space at or below ground level: plant rooms, undercrofts, basements and bin stores. Measuring is inexpensive, takes three months, and the result belongs with the compliance record.