The Challenge

The housing sector in England and Wales faces many challenges, including meeting the demand for affordable housing, tackling homelessness, geographical disparities in supply and the need for a diversity of tenures.

Over the last three decades of the 20th century, the number of households in England and Wales increased by 30 per cent, while the level of new house building fell by 50 per cent. The number of households is projected to continue growing in England by 209,000 a year to 2026, of which 72 per cent will be single person households.

This growth is linked to our ageing society. In his report on the costs of social care for the King’s Fund, Sir Derek Wanless identified that in the next 20 years, the proportion of the population aged 85 and over in England is set to increase by two-thirds, compared with a 10 per cent growth in the overall population. This will significantly increase demand for accessible housing.

In a 2006 Ipsos/Mori poll commissioned by the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) 90 per cent of the public said that they anticipated, in the event of needing support, that they would receive social care services to enable them to stay in their own home rather than be placed in (increasingly costly) residential care. Yet in England there are already 300,000 people living in unsuitable housing who require accessible or adapted accommodation. This figure is almost evenly split between owner-occupiers and social housing tenants.

Systems of allocation within social housing are failing to ensure that accessible or adapted properties go to the people who need them most. Many local authorities have no mechanism for profiling the accessibility of housing stock or matching supply with demand. The choices available to people requiring accessible or adapted housing are therefore severely restricted.

With demand already far outstripping supply, and growing steeply, action is required now to avert a new housing crisis.

Improving the supply of accessible housing, matched with support where needed, would save NHS resources. Research by the spinal injuries charity Aspire shows that it can cost around £1,000 a day to support a patient in a hospital spinal injury unit. In a single 18-month period, one spinal unit spent over £1.3 million because patients were facing delayed discharge – in 47 per cent of cases, because of a lack of suitable housing for them to move into.

With more accessible housing and an improved system of adapting existing stock, the NHS could make substantial savings. Similarly, improved housing design can prevent falls – and hospitalisation – for people with mobility and visual impairments.

Disabled people are twice as likely to be social housing tenants, less likely to own their own homes and more likely to live in ‘non-decent’ homes. Poor housing impacts on adults’ and children’s health and well-being.

Between 1997 and 2004, the number of households accepted as being in priority need by local authorities due to ‘physical disabilities’ increased by 24 per cent, and due to mental health problems by 65 per cent.

This paper proposes policy solutions aimed at meeting the housing challenge in England and Wales. It is part of a series offering the DRC proposals for a future public policy agenda.

This paper is relevant to England and Wales only. There is a companion Agenda paper on housing in Scotland.

An alternative future?

The DRC believes that reform to the way we plan, design, maintain and allocate housing is achievable. The goal is more equal distribution of housing opportunities for disabled people.

The key objectives of an effective reform agenda are to:

• Ensure that the housing requirements, aspirations and experiences of disabled people are reflected in national, regional and local policy.
• Increase the supply and efficient use of accessible housing.
• Improve housing standards, conditions and life chances.
• Maximise housing choice for disabled people across all tenures.
• Reduce the incidence of homelessness.

Recommendations for action

1. To ensure that the housing requirements, aspirations and experiences of disabled people are reflected in national, regional and local policy

Housing authorities nationally, regionally and locally should:

1.1  Establish a far more detailed picture of the housing needs of disabled people. In order to comply with the Disability Equality Duty (DED) they should undertake comprehensive surveys of housing need across different tenure and impairment groups. This data should be used to inform the development of housing strategies to provide housing and support matched to need.

2. To increase the supply and efficient use of accessible housing

Governments should:

2.1  Integrate an updated version of the lifetime homes standard or a new British Standard for Inclusive Housing in full into Part M of the Building Regulations. The DRC believes that the only guaranteed way to increase the supply of accessible housing is through binding requirements on house-builders to meet prescribed standards of accessibility.

2.2  Require that the substantial resources being invested to bring social housing up to Decent Homes Standards be used to improve the accessibility and adaptability of all properties improved under the scheme. Monitoring should establish the level of increase in supply that this generates.

2.3  Produce planning policy statements for housing development, setting clear objectives and targets for the development of inclusively designed6 general needs housing and wheelchair standard housing.

2.4  Require that the Welsh Quality Housing Standard be applied to building regulations for all new housing developments in Wales.

2.5  Require local authorities to develop registers of accessible housing, including building a profile of accessible properties within the private rented sector, integrating these into ‘choice-based lettings’ systems in England. They should ensure that information about accessible properties contained on the planned ‘National Register of Social Housing’ is accurate, sufficiently detailed, up-to-date and locally available.

Housing inspectorates should:

2.6  Revise local authorities’ performance indicators to provide more flexible ‘void turnaround targets’ so people move more quickly into accessible or adapted properties and to promote the letting of accessible properties to households requiring them.

3. To improve housing standards, conditions and life chances

Governments should:

3.1  Within the targets for home improvement, include measures of the extent to which disabled householders benefit from expenditure.

3.2  Review the strategic approach to raising housing conditions set out in the Department for Communities and Local Government and Welsh Assembly Government housing strategies, to ensure they are reaching disabled public sector tenants and homeowners.

4. To maximise housing choice for disabled people across all tenures

Governments should:

4.1  Set targets to narrow the gap in home ownership between households with disabled adults and other households.

4.2  Remove stamp duty for those disabled people purchasing a property that will require substantial alteration to meet their needs, in order to offset the additional cost of adaptation.

Regulatory and good practice bodies should:

4.3  Produce guidance for estate agents on identifying access features in properties for sale. The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors should work with the Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR) to co-ordinate this.

5. To reduce the incidence of homelessness

Governments should:

5.1  Address homelessness as a cross-cutting issue with multiple causes and effects. This will require joint planning and resourcing (between the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Welsh Assembly Government, the NHS, social services and the voluntary sector) if the needs of disabled homeless people, including those with mental health problems, are to be addressed.

Measuring change

1. Governments and housing authorities should develop improved baseline data on the housing needs of disabled people, across tenure and impairment group, in order to track progress over time in meeting people’s needs.

2. National and local governments should monitor the ratio between supply and demand for accessible and adapted housing.

3. Governments should set targets and monitor increases in housing that meet the lifetime homes standard.

4. To assess levels of choice of housing tenure, governments should monitor and report on the proportion of disabled people in owner-occupation, as compared to other citizens.

5. Government should monitor levels of ‘rooflessness’ and hidden homelessness experienced by disabled people, broken down by broad impairment group, to track the high levels of homelessness amongst disabled people, particularly those with mental health problems. This requires refining the methodology for measuring homelessness so that it accurately reflects the level of hidden homelessness experienced by people who are disabled or have long-term health conditions.

6. Progress should be reported under the DED requirements for the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Scottish Ministers and the Welsh Assembly Government First Minister. Reporting should also relate findings to ethnicity, age, gender, parental and carer status, religion and belief, and sexual orientation.

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