Clause 2
Housing and Regeneration Bill
9:30 am
George Young (North West Hampshire, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 13, in clause 2, page 1, line 11, after ‘supply’, insert ‘, accessibility’.
The amendment would extend the remit of the Homes and Communities Agency to cover increasing not just the supply and quality of new housing but also its accessibility. This is a consensual, bridge-building amendment that I know the Minister will want to accept as evidence of his good will and as an improvement to the Bill. By increasing accessibility, I mean ensuring that disabled and older people can enter and use the new homes to be provided under the Bill as independently as possible.
The genesis of the amendment was a meeting that I attended before Christmas of the all-party group on disability, which was attended by the Minister’s colleague in another place, Baroness Andrews, on housing policy and disability. The meeting welcomed the concept of the HCA as a body to produce more housing and regeneration, and protect tenants, but concern was expressed there that the proposals in the Bill to increase housing supply were out of sync with other Government objectives on accessibility. Those concerns were reinforced when, over the Christmas holiday, I re-read the Housing Minister’s speech, which was circulated at our last meeting, entitled “A Vision for 21st Century Social Housing”. It was a long and thoughtful speech with a lot in it about supply, affordability, tenant empowerment and mobility. Yet there was nothing in it about the houses themselves or about the specific subject of the amendment—ensuring that houses will be fit for purpose.
To summarise the concern expressed at the meeting, it was that the Government want to bring about a step change in the supply of housing, but that parallel policies on accessibility kick in after the policy is under way, instead of at the same time, or earlier. The object of the amendment is to ensure that the pledged 3 million new homes, to which the Minister referred earlier, will be truly sustainable and designed according to the needs of the current and future population, taking account of demography.
Over the next 20 years, the number of disabled and older people will increase by roughly two thirds, and we must factor that into the design of the homes being planned. At the moment, 1.4 million people need accessible accommodation, including 329,000 disabled people who are living in housing totally unsuited to their needs. On top of that is a nationwide shortfall of about 330,000 wheelchair-standard houses. As well, approximately half of all disabled children live in unsuitable housing.
Disabled people are more likely than others to live in a house that does not meet decent homes standards. The relatively small amount of new social housing in recent years has also hit disabled people hard. The thinking behind the amendment is to promote the lifetime home standard, which the Minister will know has been around since 1991 and is promoted by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The standard includes design features to ensure that a new house or flat will meet the needs of most households. It does not mean that every family is surrounded by features that they do not need; it means that a new flat or house can be adapted to future needs and is flexible enough to meet whatever comes along in life—a teenager with a broken leg, a family member with a serious illness or even people carrying in heavy shopping.
The lifetime home standard has been around for some time. I should like the Minister to give us some assurances about its application to the properties that will be built under the Bill. In 1999, part M of the building regulations was extended to include new housing, but those standards ensure that disabled people can visit homes, not live in them. In March 2004, the Government announced that they would review part M with a view to incorporating the lifetime home standard within two years. That commitment was reiterated in 2005 in “Opportunity Age”, which said that measures would be in place by 2007. An advisory committee was set up to begin the work, but it was suddenly disbanded.
Meanwhile, measures are in place to ensure that publicly funded housing will meet the standards by 2011. It is not clear to me why we must wait that long to extend the measures to publicly funded housing. The lifetime home standards have been incorporated into the code for sustainable homes, and the Government plan to phase them in, applying the relative levels over the next few years—level 6 this year, level 4 in 2010 and level 3 in 2013. Although that is helpful, it will take six years for most private builders to adopt lifetime home standards, and even that is not guaranteed. We also do not know the time scale for including all that in the building regulations. Perhaps the Minister could shed some light on that, as it would then bite on all new homes of all types and tenures.
It is not clear whether local authority new build, which the Bill promotes elsewhere, must meet lifetime home standards. There is a pressing reason why it should. The Minister will know what pressure there is on disabled facilities grants. They are mandatory grants to which people are entitled, but there is a long waiting list and the work is quite expensive. It involves retro-fitting at great cost the sort of facilities that I believe should be designed in at the beginning. The additional cost of building to lifetime home standards ranges from £165 to £545 a dwelling. That compares quite favourably with the average disabled facilities grant, which is factored in later.
Unless we address the layout and design of housing stock, the housing problems facing disabled people will continue and may get worse. That is why I believe that the HCA should make the need for accessible, flexible and adaptable housing a priority. Without the amendment, nothing in the Bill will ensure that the issues that I have mentioned are addressed. I hope that the Minister will look benignly on the amendment in order to promote the supply of accessible housing and reduce housing inequalities for disabled people.