Housing and Regeneration Bill

I have to rise to my feet whenever lifetime homes are mentioned. I declare my past interest as a godfather to the lifetime home standards. They were devised by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and led to the building of a number of prototypes and finally to the lifetime home standards that we all talk about today. There are groups of amendments that relate to the role of the Homes and Communities Agency, later to Oftenant, the regulator, and finally to the building regulations at the end of the Bill. We have a choice as to the best way of raising the profile of accessibility in the Bill. I add to the words of the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, when I say that we are talking not only about people with disabilities who suffer from direct problems but about everyone. The great thing about a lifetime home is that it suits you through your lifetime. Everyone’s lifetime includes moments when they suddenly realise that their house has not been designed with the problems of mobility in mind. We all have sons who break their legs playing football; they are in a wheelchair for three months and we have to carry them up and down stairs inside and steps outside and all kinds of terrible things. We have a granny or grandfather who comes to stay, or we are the granny or grandfather. Lifetimes require homes to be more accessible, which they can be if accessibility is taken into account at the design stage. This is therefore a really important universal issue. The question is where best to fit it into the Bill. I will not be happy with the thought of Oftenant, as a regulator, requiring a particular kind of design. That would not be a very good place for this to go to. I will speak in favour of the building regulations being tweaked again, because it is through the building regulations that half the first lifetime home standards have already been established. They now apply to the building of every home by Barratt or by Wimpey. They have nothing to do with social housing; they are a universal in building regulations. There are no more of those steps that freeze over in winter and that you go skidding off when as an elderly person you come out of the front door. We do not put big front-door steps in the way of people any more. Building regulations now already take on board half of the lifetime home standards. The next step is to add the other half so that the standards apply to all homes everywhere that are built from here on. That is the target to go for. As a second best—it is second best to me—