Housing and Regeneration Bill

We have had a good debate on a very important subject that is dear to my heart for reasons that will become clear. Having said that, I am afraid that the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, predicted how I would respond, but I hope that I shall put forward some good arguments. I hope that in doing so I can reassure him. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, that we tend to see the briefing from various lobbies and we are grateful for it. We are living in an ageing society, which brings with it a higher proportion of people with disabilities. I do not know whether the RADAR figures are completely accurate because we are all in the business of trying to make intelligent predictions, but certainly the number of people living longer and with disability will increase, which is why the amendment is important and why we must be serious about what we are trying to do, as, indeed, we are. Perhaps I may track back to the amendment itself. The HCA already has the object to improve the supply and quality of housing in England with a view to meeting the needs of people living in England. Clause 2(1) lists the four objects of the HCA. Clause 2(2) refers to people’s ““future needs”” and, "““improving the supply of particular kinds of housing””." This means that the HCA is charged with ensuring that the different needs of the community are catered for by providing housing of different tenures and types. That includes the provision of accessible housing. For example, if the local assessment of needs shows that you have a local population with a disproportionate number of elderly people and, by implication, of disabled people, there will be a need for accessible homes over and above market or affordable homes. The agency is duty bound to enable the provision of that type of home. That could include needs which are specific to particular communities and localities. That is picked up by the notion of the ““continued well-being”” of communities. The HCA must work in partnership with local authorities, which negotiate the money they have available for disabled facilities grants to provide major adaptations such as having a ground floor bathroom put in for children or adults who can no longer use the stairs. The understanding of the needs of their local communities will shape the assessment of the type of housing to be provided. This will feed into the regional tier where the broad allocations of funding are decided and where the new National Housing and Planning Advice Unit will engage with the development of the regional spatial strategy. All that helps us not only to get a clear picture of what is needed locally but how it fits into the wider picture. That is one aspect of what we are doing to meet the need for accessible homes but it goes much wider than that, as was picked up by the Committee. Recently we published a policy on housing and ageing, which is the first of its kind in the world. For the first time we have mapped our housing needs on to our demography. This picks up the point made by the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, and the noble Lord, Lord Best. In the future, we shall seek not to build niche homes for older people but to build the sort of homes that we will all grow into as we grow older. That is the critical difference and is what future-proofs—to use a cliché—our ambitions and expectations. We have to do that because with an ageing population we simply cannot build for obsolescence. We have to have the sort of homes that will survive. The most benign of godfathers, Godfather Best, if I may call him that, made this perfectly clear when the Joseph Rowntree trust did its important work establishing 16 very simple standards for lifetime homes, which range from widening doors to having flat access into the hallway. Those standards are not difficult to achieve. The Housing Corporation and English Partnerships powerfully took forward a commitment to build lifetime homes. They have led the way. We, in our policy, have stated that by 2011 all public-sector-funded homes will be developed as lifetime homes, and that we will work with industry to ensure that all homes will be built to that standard by 2013. That is a deliberate, balanced policy. It would be unfair of us to say to industry, ““In the next six months, you have to build everything as lifetime homes””. It would not be practical or, indeed, fair. However, by setting a timescale within which they can work, by pledging, as we have, to work—