Government should act now to avoid deepening accessible homes crisis | Latest news

By Christina McGill, Director of Social Impact & External Affairs, Habinteg
 

With a new Labour government entering Westminster this week, we’re beginning to hear more about its plans, including the central role that new homes and infrastructure projects will have.

With a house building target of 1.5 million over the course of the parliament, Habinteg is keen to ensure that new homes are designed to be inclusive and adaptable so that every one of them helps us meet the housing needs of both current and future generations, particularly disabled and older people.

Making do won't do

At Habinteg we hear all too often from new tenants about the struggles they’ve had in finding a suitable home. People tell us how ‘making do’ in an inaccessible place has impacted their physical and mental health and overall wellbeing.

The positive impacts of finding an accessible property are so often things that non-disabled people take for granted, such as tucking telling the children a bedtime story in their own room, making a Sunday roast for the family or simply getting out into the garden with ease. Securing an accessible home can even be the deciding factor in being able to accept a job offer.

One tenant whose experience stood out for me was the man who told us that the dignifying effect of being able to use the bathroom without assistance had transformed his mental health and sense of independence.

By 2041, the UK will see an increase of 4.4 million people aged 65 and over, and with disability rates increasing there is rising demand for accessible housing. With only 9% of English homes currently assessed as possessing even the most basic combination of accessibility features, Habinteg believes there’s a clear case for immediate action if our nation’s housing stock is to be fit for the future.

Accessible and adaptable homes

We are calling for all new homes to be built to accessible and adaptable standards (as defined in Building Regulations) which provide ease of living and speedy, cost-effective adaptation when household needs change.

We also want to make sure that enough homes are built to building regulations’ wheelchair user dwelling standard. These homes are more space-hungry by their nature so can be more costly to build.

However, research Habinteg commissioned from the London School of Economics (LSE) last year shows that such homes more than make up for this in the value they generate, both to the household and to publicly funded services like health and social care because homes that support people’s independence and wellbeing mean less demand for external support. For example, a wheelchair accessible property for an older age group household is estimated by LSE to generate a value of some £9,000 per year, most of which is the result of reduced demand for social care.

So, by ensuring all new homes meet higher accessibility standards, the new government could save millions in reduced costs whilst also supporting greater community engagement and economic participation among disabled and older people.

Our suggestions

We have five suggestions as to how they might go about this.

The most urgent action is to implement the ‘accessible and adaptable’ dwelling standard as the regulatory baseline for all new homes. This commitment, made by the previous administration in July 2022, was widely welcomed and remains central to ensuring that the homes built today will continue to meet people’s needs into the future. It requires one short further consultation with industry stakeholders on implementation details, so we’d like to see this work kick off without delay.

The imminent revision of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) is an opportunity to strengthen rules on planning for the housing needs of older and disabled people. Planning authorities should be duty-bound to have a policy for a percentage of all new homes to be Wheelchair User Dwellings and the NPPF should be much more direct about this.

Given that meeting the needs of wheelchair users depends so much on the quality of the built environment, we believe the NPPF should reflect this by setting clear expectations of local plans. Paired with this, we’d like to see the Secretary of State instruct the Planning Inspectorate to reject any Local Plan that fails to set out a policy and target for wheelchair user dwellings.

We welcome the Chancellor’s announcement that Government will fund three hundred new planning officers to help unblock development decisions. However, to realise the ambition of building more accessible homes it’s essential that these professionals have a strong knowledge of accessible and inclusive design and can intervene where planning proposals aren’t delivering.

The same applies to building control teams and approved inspectors, all of whom are the guardians of quality on which disabled and older people rely to ensure that new homes deliver in practice what the regulations say they should. (Training from our Habinteg’s Centre for Accessible Environments is an ideal way to secure practical knowledge of the standards.)

The final critical lever that national government can use is that of funding. The Homes England strategic plan 2023-2028, was largely silent on inclusive design and accessibility however as this body is a vehicle for strategic investment of public money, we believe it’s critical that all homes built with its grant backing are designed with long term value and inclusive outcomes in mind.

To this end, the next round of grant funding should specify that all homes must be accessible and adaptable as an absolute minimum and to help regions ‘catch up’ with the lack of wheelchair accessible properties, we’d like to see any development of over 10 homes provide 10% of homes to wheelchair accessible standards with that 10% being representative of the overall tenure and housing size mix on the development as a whole. 

Maximise policy and funding

The Government has set itself a challenging housing target and we are glad to see prompt action announced. But to make the most of this commitment in a way that will truly meet the practical daily living needs of the population both now and in decades ahead, it is essential to consider the design quality and consequent long term value of all new homes. We need every policy and funding initiative to be maximised in favour of accessible homes.

Despite the change of administration, Habinteg’s message to government remains the same: the need for accessible homes is urgent and growing rapidly so plan for accessible homes now or lay the foundations for a housing crisis of a different kind in the future. 

First published in Inclusive Design magazine in July 2024.