Covid-19: Planning System

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh]

I am afraid that I cannot give the noble Lord a precise timetable, but we are well aware that many of the emergency measures that we need to reboot the economy, including making the requisite planning changes, need to occur before the Summer Recess.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD) [V]]

My Lords, what assurance can the Minister give that homes constructed under permitted development rights will be required to meet all the policy standards, including accessibility, set out in local planning policy?

[Lord Greenhalgh]

Certainly there is no diminution in the standards required for accessibility in these temporary and pragmatic changes as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Covid-19: Housing

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh]

The information that we have in the department is that no Section 114 notices are imminent. We need to recognise that this Government have provided around £20 billion of investment into local services in just two months. That includes two tranches of £1.6 billion to ease demand pressures on local councils and around £5 billion of cash-flow measures, as well as other measures to support wider transport issues, including the recent bailout of Transport for London. I note the noble Baroness’s concerns, but at the moment we have no evidence that councils are about to go to the wall.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, when will the accessible homes consultation start, and will the Minister join me at the next virtual meeting of Habinteg’s Insight Group to update disabled people directly on progress?

[Lord Greenhalgh]

My understanding is that the consultation is with the Secretary of State and we hope to get it out as soon as possible.

Housebuilding: Accidents in the Home

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2019 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

We welcome the work of RoSPA and take note of its design standard, Safer by Design: A Framework to Reduce Serious Accidental Injury in New-Build Homes, which I have here and have read. We are developing a programme to review the building regulations guidance and will carefully consider any relevant recommendations from RoSPA. However, the noble Lord makes a more important point: the figures are pretty awful. We have a figure of 255,000 fall-related emergency hospital admissions per year for older people, and the annual cost to the UK of hip fractures is estimated to be around £2 billion, so this is an important matter.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, accidents in the home are bound to increase with the rapidly ageing population. Does the Minister agree that if homes today are not built to accessible and adaptable standards, it could be very difficult even to fit grab rails in the bathroom, for example?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

The noble Baroness is right. That is why we are reviewing all the schedules, particularly in her case Part M of Schedule 1 to the Building Regulations 2010, which sets requirements for access and use of old buildings. We are looking very carefully at this, because it is extremely important, when people move into their homes and then become disabled, that there is that adaptability.