My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford for adding their names to Amendment 207. Indeed, when this House had a dress rehearsal for this amendment, discussing the related Amendment 221 last month, the noble Lord, Lord Young, expertly outlined the case for the planning system to do more to reflect our ageing population, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester—in place of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford—gave invaluable support to this theme.
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It was very helpful, too, to get the views of the Minister in response to that first instalment in our efforts to improve the Bill from the perspective of housing for older people. We want the Bill to trigger a real breakthrough in provision of suitable housing for older people. Amendment 207 would ensure that local authorities recognise the needs in their area for such housing and, alongside Amendment 221, would enable the outcome of assessments to feed into local plans, as I shall explain in a moment. In this context, I warmly welcome the eagerly awaited announcement of an older people’s housing taskforce, to be chaired by Professor Julienne Meyer. We all have high hopes that this government initiative will lead to real progress in tackling the housing needs of our aging population.
I declare my interest as chairman of a series of HAPPI inquiries—Housing our Ageing Population: Panel for Innovation—initiated by the APPG on Housing and Care for Older People, which I chair jointly with Peter Aldous MP. I am also drawing on the professional input of the Retirement Housing Group, which brings together the developers and providers of most new homes being built for later living. I am grateful for this group’s input.
At the last Committee sitting, the case was made for the building of many thousands more new homes for the older generation, particularly perhaps the extra-care assisted living projects that combine independent apartments or bungalows with social and care facilities on tap when needed. Retirement housing schemes enhance health and well-being, keep people out of expensive residential care and out of hospital, and save NHS and care budgets. They also achieve two for one by releasing family homes for the next generation. However, total output of all forms of retirement housing is running at around 8,000 homes per annum, compared with national estimates of need for 30,000 to 35,000 homes. We have no chance of achieving this growth so long as we simply hope that market forces will do the job.
The housebuilding industry is dominated by an oligopoly of volume builders that concentrate on the easier market of first-time buyers and young people. Developments for older people are less profitable because sales are slower, since prospective buyers wait for the whole development to be completed and the management to be in place, because older buyers demand higher standards of space and accessibility, and because schemes have the expense of communal areas and shared gardens. These extras are the very essence of specialist developments of different sorts. They combat the epidemic of loneliness and isolation, not least in supporting couples where
one is a carer—maybe with a partner who has been diagnosed with dementia—and there is help and companionship there for both. These schemes also make formal care much easier to provide in one place. However, the extra land requirements and additional capital costs are hard to recoup simply by demanding a higher price, so those building for younger people, where profits are higher, will outbid the specialist providers of retirement homes in the competition for land.
Intervention through the planning system represents the key opportunity to create a more level playing field. Central government has an important leadership role through its National Planning Policy Framework and related guidance. Already, this gives encouragement to local planning authorities to take on board the housing needs of older people. The current consultation on the NPPF indicates the Government’s desire to improve the diversity of housing options available to older people and to boost supply. However, research by Irwin Mitchell and Knight Frank in July 2022 found that just 22% of local authorities have a clear planning policy in place for older people’s housing. This amendment attempts to change that depressing statistic and ensure that planning at the local level enables and supports provision of retirement housing.
Government has more levers to pull in respect of social housing provision and could—and should—use its grant funding through Homes England and the Greater London Authority to secure a more appropriate proportion of its affordable housing programme for older people’s housing. However, this amendment uses the powers of local planning to make things happen for social and private sector providers. Most importantly, this could mean incorporating requirements for older people’s housing into local plans. As other clauses in the Bill emphasise, establishing a rigorous local plan is critical, and so is the determination and insistence of the planning authority to uphold that local plan. Including a firm requirement in the local plan for retirement housing in the mix of new homes would give the specialist private and social housing providers the impetus they need to boost production.
I will address one objection from some councils to supporting planning applications for older people’s housing. This is the spurious argument that such housing will encourage migration of people needing social care into the area. This is a complete misunderstanding of what retirement apartments and communities are achieving. Some more affluent home purchasers may be moving some distance to the retirement development from elsewhere—for example, leaving London to move to a seaside resort or a more rural locale. However, those movers will pay for their social care, and more broadly they will bring spending power that supports local economies the year round.
For the great majority of developments, surveys of residents show that most people move only a short distance when rightsizing to purpose-built new accommodation. Most residents are already living in the local authority’s area, and the more suitable accommodation will actually mean that the council can expect significant savings to its social care budget. Those savings will accrue because home care needs are likely to be reduced when people
are in safer, more accessible accommodation, where support, including mutual support from fellow residents, is available, and because the greater expense of residential care is likely to be prevented or postponed. Moreover, it is far easier to deliver care to older people in one retirement development than for care workers to spend endless time travelling between their numerous visits.
The plan-makers should have no concerns that retirement housing will add a burden to social care services. As Amendment 207 spells out, plans should take on board a full assessment of the need for older people’s housing in the area and, in the highly likely event that this demonstrates unmet supply, clear requirements on housebuilders and developers can be justified in the local plan.
Housing for later living can and should be treated in the same way as planning for affordable housing, through specifying an obligatory proportion of new homes—perhaps 10%—in all developments over a certain size to be for older people. Thus larger schemes can include, for example, an extra care development, usually of between 40 and 60 apartments. This achieves an intergenerational mix within all major new housing developments. In addition, planners can earmark and allocate individual sites specifically for older people’s housing—for example in town centres, where such developments can be important community anchors and can help broader regeneration. The same treatment can go for windfall sites that emerge after preparation of the local plan. I should add that neighbourhood plans can play a key role in highlighting and supporting local requirements for retirement housing.
I will conclude with one or two statistics. The number of us who will be over 80 is set to rise from 3.3 million to 4.5 million in the coming decade and, even more striking, those over 85 will double from 1.6 million to 3.2 million. Yet we are seeing the numbers of specialist apartments and bungalows for older people decline: supply per thousand population aged 75 and over has fallen from 139 homes in 2015 to 110 in 2021, not least following the closure of older social rented stock without replacement.
It is clear that this issue is becoming more and more urgent. Amendment 207 would help create the conditions necessary to achieve that elusive tipping point in making rightsizing for one’s older age the norm and providing for the thousands more who need and want a suitable home. I hope the Minister agrees, and I beg to move.