Disabled people in the housing sector: Consultation Response from Habinteg

Earlier this summer (July 2023), the Parliamentary Select Committee of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities opened an inquiry to examine the role of Government, local councils and developers in ensuring the delivery of suitable housing for disabled people.

The committee want to investigate what the government can do to support disabled tenants in the private rented sector in England as well as looking at the National Planning Policy Framework and its compatibility with the Equality Act 2010 when building housing.

The inquiry also aims to examine the progress made since the publication of July 2022 findings of the government’s consultation titled; ‘Raising accessibility standards for new homes.’

Habinteg’s response

Habinteg welcomed the inquiry and submitted a response to the call for evidence.

We reported information from our latest research with London School of Economics and Political Science, Living not existing: the social and economic value of wheelchair user homes , our Roadmap for Accessible Housing and our 2020 Forecast for Accessible Homes report.

We included anonymous quotes from disabled people about their housing experience from our latest research with LSE as well as from Habinteg’s Insight Group Members.

Key Recommendations

Drawing on the evidence provided Habinteg included four key recommendations in its submission:

1. Implement the planned new regulatory baseline for accessible homes and ensure that all Local Authorities enforce the requirements to build to the M4(2) standard.

2. Revise the National Planning Policy Framework to explicitly require all local plans to include a specific policy and target for new wheelchair accessible (M4(3) homes, and where no local target is set to require 10% of new homes to meet the standard.

3. Require the Planning Inspectorate to reject any local plan that omits a policy statement and target for M4(3) homes.

4. Ensure that Homes England prioritises funding for developments that provide new wheelchair accessible homes across a range of house types and tenures.

Read Habinteg’s full evidence submission: Habinteg submission DLUHC Committee Inquiry 2023 Disabled people in the housing sector.docx 58KB