Ageing: Public Services and Demographic Change Committee Report

Baroness Wilkins Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilkins (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lord Filkin on securing this debate and on his committee’s excellent report warning us that the Government and society are woefully unprepared for the ageing of the UK population.

Like many fellow noble Lords, I am one of that cohort known as the baby boomers. However, we have not just arrived; we have been around a long time—long enough for successive Governments to prepare for. By 2031, I shall be 85, when there will be twice the number of people of that age than in 2010. Yet, as the report says,

“no government so far has had a vision and coherent strategy”,

to ensure that our society is ready for ageing. Government, central and local, can no longer keep their heads buried in the sand.

It is the report’s reflections on loneliness and isolation on which I want to concentrate today. Citing the deleterious impact of loneliness on the quality of life and the health and well-being of the old, the report sees this as,

“one of the biggest risk factors for people needing care and support”,

and the group most affected is older women who mostly live alone.

In their response to Ready for Ageing?, the Government acknowledge the huge impact of social isolation and persistent loneliness on people’s health and well-being in later life. However, they then go on to suggest technology, touch-screen tablets, e-mails and video conferencing as a remedy. This surely was dreamed up by a 25 year-old, totally unaware of the realities of being an 85 year-old woman living on her own in frail health in 2030. Loneliness requires human contact, touch and empathy, and the everyday stimulus of news and gossip. It requires people whose presence does not depend on the state of a local authority’s budget.

I have spoken a number of times in this Chamber about cohousing—a way of living that combines today’s aspiration for the autonomy of our own home with being within a supportive community. It is a model well established in continental Europe, where senior cohousing communities are encouraged by various Governments also faced with rapidly ageing societies. They are based on a range of ages over 50 and are a self-help model—fundamentally a means of prevention, harnessing the energies of younger cohorts of older people to address their own futures and help others.

I declare an interest in that I am a member of Cohousing Woodside, a group working with Hanover Housing Association to develop a senior cohousing community in Muswell Hill. I am also partner to one of senior cohousing’s main advocates in the UK.

I first spoke of the struggle to establish senior cohousing in the UK in the debate on the Queen’s Speech in 2003, mentioning OWCH, the Older Women’s Cohousing project, a low-income group of women Londoners aged between 50 and 80, all living alone. For five years they had been meeting regularly, building the social capital which is the essence of cohousing. They aimed to be, and are, a living demonstration of how older people can band together to address the challenges of ageing. My noble friend Lord Warner, then the Minister, was very encouraging in his reply to the debate. But that was 10 years ago, and those people are still waiting for their homes to be built. One of the founder members is now 84, and living up a flight of 27 steps. Thankfully, Hanover Housing Association has seen the benefits of cohousing and taken action. It is now about to build the OWCH community in Barnet, the first senior cohousing community in the country, due for completion in 2015. In what will be an age-proofed, low-energy, lifetime homes standard environment, which they will manage themselves, they will operate as friendly, supportive neighbours. This insightful initiative by Hanover sets an example that others should follow.

This model of cohousing deserves much greater official support and encouragement in a housing and planning system where the cards are totally stacked against it. Hanover’s enterprise in promoting it is to be applauded and lessons need to be learnt from the 14 groups around the country struggling to develop senior cohousing. The authorities must be shaken out of their torpor by the report of the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, and start to take radical action. So much could and should be done. The Government could do much to offer incentives to developers and local authorities. For instance, they could provide public land from public housing sites.

Cohousing is obviously not the answer to societal ageing, but it is one answer, and one that makes full use of the assets of our older population.