By Martin Miller, director, tor&co
It’s been a 12 months because the Older Folks’s Housing Taskforce revealed its landmark unbiased report – backed by two government-funded analysis initiatives however frustratingly revealed too late to affect the December 2024 Nationwide Planning Coverage Framework (NPPF). Its message was clear: if the UK is severe about tackling the housing disaster, it should guarantee extra housing for folks in later life and strengthen nationwide and native planning insurance policies required to ship it.
A 12 months on, the necessity for reform stays. Nationwide planning coverage was not bolstered following the Authorities’s publication of the 2024 NPPF, and native planning authorities (LPAs) have due to this fact but to obtain the coverage readability required to translate good intentions into significant motion. However what’s the state of play because the report and the way can the sector inject better urgency right into a coverage space that by 2038 might be important to 57% extra of us when in comparison with 2018?
Part of the housing disaster puzzle
Many planning authorities don’t perceive the idea of “housing with care” or recognise the societal advantages which built-in retirement communities can present. In brief, they supply “proper measurement” lodging, can assist hold folks more healthy for longer and supply social infrastructure to scale back isolation and demand on public well being providers.
The advantages of purpose-built retirement communities for the broader housing market additionally stay painfully under-appreciated. In response to a report by Houses for Later Residing, surplus bedrooms are anticipated to succeed in over 20 million within the UK by 2040, with older households contributing 60% of those. It additionally reveals, if all over-65s that wished to may transfer, a million houses can be straight launched on the market, and two million bedrooms would develop into accessible. Every new later residing dwelling has been proven to unencumber no less than one, typically two, household houses, and these developments are in a position to be introduced ahead with out including stress on native faculty locations – typically a priority for different sorts of residential proposals. A strategic dedication to later residing is due to this fact not a distinct segment coverage for an ageing inhabitants; it’s a mainstream housing coverage that may assist get Britain constructing and the market transferring once more.
While planning authorities and most of the people appear to be fixated on the supply of inexpensive housing, later residing is the one kind of housing which nationwide planning follow steering regards as important – and this has been the case for the final six years.
A coverage vacuum
It has been three years since Professor Les Mayhew referred to as for the federal government to construct 50,000 new houses for older folks annually to sort out the UK’s housing and social care disaster. However regardless of a recognition of the important want for older individuals’ housing, nationwide planning coverage solely requires LPAs to ascertain the necessity, measurement, kind and tenure of housing for various teams in the neighborhood, and to replicate this in native planning insurance policies.
There is no such thing as a requirement for improvement plans to offer a particular quantum of housing for older folks or to allocate websites for such lodging. Consequently, it’s no shock that only a few native plans do. This typically leaves proponents of well-designed, sustainable and socially helpful schemes making ready speculative planning purposes on unallocated websites and arguing their planning deserves in a coverage vacuum. This generally is a gradual, unsure and dear pathway to securing a planning permission and it’ll undoubtedly deter many from making an attempt.
With no actually supportive strategic planning framework, the sector can’t scale, irrespective of how robust the demographic or coverage case could also be.
Why spatial planning should step up for later residing
If the UK desires to unlock housing for all generations, later residing should take its place alongside inexpensive housing, city regeneration and infrastructure supply priorities with clear help from native planning authorities via native plan allocations. And the system must recognise that the discharge of household houses onto the market might be a direct strategic advantage of later-living improvement.
This argument has lengthy been championed by Lord Greatest – Co-Chair of the All-Get together Parliamentary Teams (APPGs) for Housing and Take care of Older Folks in addition to New Cities – a champion for improved later residing improvement, who argued that 10% of recent houses needs to be allotted by LPAs for later residing.
What must be carried out?
One 12 months on from the Taskforce report, the message is unchanged, however the stakes are larger: with out strengthened planning coverage for later residing lodging, the UK is unlikely to resolve its housing disaster.
Builders inside the retirement sector may do extra by selling land via the event plan course of, one thing which the business doesn’t are likely to do, however which the housebuilding sector does ceaselessly. LPAs can do extra by recognising the broader advantages of later residing houses and allocating extra land for retirement communities of their native plans. And the Authorities can do extra by strengthening nationwide coverage to require extra later residing houses to be delivered.
Additional amendments to nationwide planning coverage are attributable to be revealed within the coming weeks, however will the sector get an early Christmas current?
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