Housing and Planning Bill

Lord Swinfen Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2016 Lords Chamber

A long time ago, in the late 1970s, when I was chairman of the local housing committee, one thing that we did year after year was build a small number of properties for disabled people. Those properties are still there and people are still benefiting from them. However, such properties are no longer being built. As more and more people live longer and longer, more people become disabled. It will happen to most of us at some stage in our lives. However, it seems that we cannot look ahead and plan for it. As far as housing for older people is concerned, as a society we still have not found ways of providing good endings to the lives of many people. We know how to do it in many cases, as in the examples mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross. We know what to do and what kind of provision should be made, but it is simply not a priority. We should all be very ashamed of that. Many of us may suffer at the end of our lives as a result, if the experience of our final years is not as good as it could be, although we do not know whether that will be the case. Housing is crucial to this. Both these amendments are worthy, particularly that of the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, as it would place a duty on local authorities to look at this matter and consider it in all their planning policies for new housing. That is critical.

[Lord Swinfen (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews. I have been in this House since 1977. During that time, the number of Members on the mobile Bench has increased considerably. When I entered the House, I think there was one, possibly two. That is an example of what is happening in the wider world around us, where you see more and more people using wheelchairs. More of us are living much longer because of the improvement in medicines and doctoring. That means that more people will need wheelchairs.

A property that is built for wheelchair use does not preclude it being used by people who do not need wheelchairs. However, those who move into that property when they do not need a wheelchair will not have the expense and complete upset of having to move home when they do. The more residential property with proper wheelchair access that is built, whether it comprises blocks of flats or individual houses, the better. Make it easy for one and you make it easy for all to keep people in their homes. Most people want to stay in their homes permanently. I strongly support the noble Baroness’s amendment which would also cover most of what is required by the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall add a quick comment. Of course, I support my noble friend’s amendment and the absolutely spot-on comments of the noble Lord, Lord Swinfen. However, quite a number of elderly people suffer from disabilities which do not confine them to a wheelchair but still require aids and adaptations to be built into the property. For example, they cannot lean over to open a window if the windows are too high and stiff; their arthritic hands make them incapable of that. They cannot manage plugs at floor level because they cannot stoop and bend. These have to be sited at about waist height: suitable for anybody, whether in a wheelchair or not. They will need surfaces in kitchens which are, if you like, on Ladderax and can be adapted as they become more physically immobile but not necessarily confined to a wheelchair. Many of them will, alas, go on to suffer from mental health deterioration such as Alzheimer’s and so on. They will need smart gadgetry in their homes. In my city, the estimates for building that in when housing for older people is built are around £10,000. If you try to retrofit, you quadruple that cost.

I do not disagree in the slightest with the remarks that have already been made: I very much support them. However, I hope that we take a wider view of the increasing frailties that are being generated among elderly people. Many of them will be in wheelchairs; many will have disabilities and frailties which are not wheelchair-related. They may be hard of hearing; they may have difficulty getting into the house. In my housing association’s sheltered housing scheme, one of our most difficult problems now is retrofitting space for mobility scooters and their charging. The housing was built 20 years ago, when mobility scooters, as we know them, hardly existed. Now there may be 15 to 20 mobility scooters in a scheme of 40 households, but nowhere to park them or plug them in. There is a real problem of space standards here. I know that it is hard to think forward and we will always end up retrofitting, but I hope that the Government will take this away and consult with architects and companies like Habinteg which have very wide experience of disability needs in house-building, to see what that agenda should look like for the next 20 or 30 years.

[Baroness Morgan of Ely]

My Lords, the accessibility of housing stock to people with mobility problems remains woefully low and more needs to be done by the Government to increase the number of homes where people with disabilities or mobility problems can live. By increasing the supply of homes that are accessible to people with disabilities or who have mobility problems, we will help people with care needs to be able to stay in their own home for longer and, potentially, reduce the costs on other services. The whole area of adult social care needs careful consideration. The benefits and challenges of living longer need to be addressed. We need to ensure that people can live rewarding lives for as long as possible.

We need to bear in mind the fact that people are likely to spend 20 or 30 years in retirement. It is, therefore, important to focus on this when we are developing policy. My noble friend Lady Andrews was absolutely correct to draw the attention of the Committee to the self-inflicted damage done to this Government by their treatment of the disabled in the Budget last week. By accepting this amendment, they might make up some of the massive territory that they lost with the disabled community this week.

The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, with her wealth of experience, is someone the Government really should listen to. Amendment 89LZC, in her name, requires that planning authorities, or the Secretary of State, should have special regard to the local need to provide adequate and appropriate accommodation for that ageing population. We support that position. Amendment 102, in the name of my noble friends Lord Kennedy and Lord Beecham sets out to put, in the relevant regulation, the fact that new dwellings should meet the nationally described space standards published in March 2015. This amendment is only putting into the schedule to the Bill the Building Regulations standards agreed by this Government and I hope the Minister can accept it.

[Lord Swinfen]

The noble Baroness is castigating the Government for the way that developers are building residential accommodation. Should she not be castigating developers for not thinking about how much longer their residential property could be used if it were properly designed in the first place? The Building Regulations are there, so developers need to produce answers not just the Government.

[Baroness Morgan of Ely]

Absolutely, but it would make sense for the Government to ensure that developers are absolutely clear about their responsibilities. These amendments would send a message to those developers: that they need to take this on board and that it is in their own interests to ensure that these provisions are made.