Housing for Older People

Baroness Jenkin of Kennington Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I pay tribute to the work of the noble Lord, Lord Best, in this space. As I said, the task force will be looking at all these issues. The noble Lord will be aware that, in April last year, the Government launched a new model of shared ownership, specifically targeted at older people—it is in fact called older people’s shared ownership. The parameters it set reduced the minimum share required for ownership from 25% to 10% of a home’s market value, so lowering the cost of the deposit required. It introduced new staircasing arrangements to make it easier for a homeowner to purchase more of their home, and implemented a new tenure initial repair period, during which the housing provider is required to support homeowners in new-build homes with the cost of maintenance and repairs. We also extended the minimum lease term from 99 years to 990 years, which will prevent homeowners having to pay to extend their lease.

[Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)]

My Lords, a couple of years ago, the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, and I were on the Intergenerational Fairness and Provision Select Committee and we took evidence from the late Sir John Hills, who said that there was enough housing stock in the country if it were used better. We also took evidence from organisations such as Homeshare, which promotes the opportunity for older people to stay in their own home for longer, which is what they want, with a young person living with them at very minimal cost to them both. Will the Government do more to promote innovative schemes such as those which enable older people to stay in their own home for longer?

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for raising that question. In fact, there was an article in the Sunday Times a couple of weeks ago about a friendship that had formed between a young student who had gone to live with an older person. In return for free housing, he was providing gardening and shopping services, and two years into the pandemic they are now the greatest of friends. Models such as Homeshare clearly have a lot to offer. Generally, the department thinks it is great to see innovative models of housing which are contributing to our aim of enabling older people to live healthier, independent lives for longer and preserve their independence and connections to the community. My noble friend is quite right: we estimate that there are currently something approaching 3.7 million of underoccupied houses, but many people wish to stay in their house and are looking for a scheme such as Homeshare to be able to do so.