HAPPI won't make old people content

I have spent the past five years working in a strategic role to promote the housing needs of older people. Some of the biggest providers of older people’s housing still have schemes with a large proportion of bedsits and many first floor flats without lifts. I’ve been to see many new developments, and none scores more than six out of 10, with many providers admitting they’re still learning as they go along. At around £10 million per scheme, these experiments are costing a lot already.

I’ve worked with a number of good housing associations over the years but some still see the installation of lifts in general needs flats as too expensive. The provision of two bedrooms is also not universally accepted as a good thing: some housing association development staff favour one-bedroom schemes as they’re cheaper to build and you can squeeze more units into a scheme to make it viable.

The HAPPI report does pick up the issue of the Code for Sustainable Homes but again, some development staff believe they don’t have to worry about this as it is not a requirement.

The report fails to take into account the terrible legacy left by private sector developers who have been building apartments for the active elderly without any thought for their future needs. There is also no mention that housing associations are averse to building mixed tenure schemes in the current market. For some reason the mixed and balanced communities put forward in Planning policy statement 3 don’t figure in affordable housing for older people.

I believe that mixed tenure, some market sale, some shared ownership and some social rented is the right thing to do to achieve mixed communities - they are also vital to ensure that the development costs stack up.

Another omission from the report is any mention of community facilities and alternatives to the car, such as pooled electric cars which could be charged alongside mobility scooters. Fareham Council is planning to promote ground-floor community facilities accessible to the wider community in any new schemes. This could avoid duplication, removing the need to build separate community centres, libraries and public toilets alongside sheltered housing schemes.

The national strategy Lifetime Homes, Lifetime Neighbourhoods said a lot of good things and so does the HAPPI report but how can we turn these aspirations into reality?

My answer is that we need to find new joint venture models, and new forms of investment to provide schemes of the highest quality, with rewards as an integral part of the process to achieve higher standards of design, energy efficiency, space and quality of communal facilities. This could offer local authorities the opportunity to lead and to take a longer-term view about the importance of new schemes at the centre of local neighbourhoods.

However, local authorities need to up their game as we’re still having to deal with the problems associated with the last ill-thought out sheltered housing boom of the 1960s and 70s. We’ll also need to jointly commission these new schemes with the primary care trusts equally committed to the new vision with funding and energy.

This is serious stuff, and as the report eloquently states throughout, this is all our futures and that of many millions of older people. Neither failure nor lack of ambition should be an option.

Andrew Fiske, head of strategic housing, Fareham Council

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