Housing for Older People

Lord Best Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

As I said, the complete membership of the task force, which is to be led by Stuart Andrew, is still being put together. All I have managed to push the department to say is that it will be meeting for the first time shortly after the Recess.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, the task force, which was first announced on 25 May last year, is indeed very welcome. Will the Minister confirm that it will consider all the options here, including shared ownership housing for older people, which is the subject of an inquiry I am currently chairing by the APPG on Housing and Care for Older People? Could shared ownership be the answer for those in the squeezed middle who cannot afford to buy somewhere more suitable but for whom there is no social rented housing available?

[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.