By Martin Miller, director, tor&co
It’s been a 12 months for the reason that Older Individuals’s Housing Taskforce printed its landmark impartial report – backed by two government-funded analysis initiatives however frustratingly printed too late to affect the December 2024 Nationwide Planning Coverage Framework (NPPF). Its message was clear: if the UK is critical 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 subsequently but to obtain the coverage readability required to translate good intentions into significant motion. However what’s the state of play for the reason that report and the way can the sector inject larger urgency right into a coverage space that by 2038 will probably be essential 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 dimension” lodging, may also help maintain folks more healthy for longer and supply social infrastructure to cut 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 keeping with a report by Properties for Later Residing, surplus bedrooms are anticipated to achieve over 20 million within the UK by 2040, with older households contributing 60% of those. It additionally exhibits, if all over-65s that wished to may transfer, a million houses can be immediately launched on the market, and two million bedrooms would turn into obtainable. Every new later dwelling residence has been proven to unlock a minimum of one, usually two, household houses, and these developments are capable of be introduced ahead with out including strain on native faculty locations – usually a priority for different sorts of residential proposals. A strategic dedication to later dwelling is subsequently 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 reasonably priced housing, later dwelling is the one sort of housing which nationwide planning follow steering regards as essential – and this has been the case for the final six years.
A coverage vacuum
It has been three years since Professor Les Mayhew known as for the federal government to construct 50,000 new houses for older folks every year to sort out the UK’s housing and social care disaster. However regardless of a recognition of the essential want for older individuals’ housing, nationwide planning coverage solely requires LPAs to ascertain the necessity, dimension, sort and tenure of housing for various teams locally, and to replicate this in native planning insurance policies.
There is no such thing as a requirement for improvement plans to supply a selected 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 usually leaves proponents of well-designed, sustainable and socially useful schemes making ready speculative planning functions 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 attempting.
With out a really supportive strategic planning framework, the sector can not scale, irrespective of how sturdy the demographic or coverage case could also be.
Why spatial planning should step up for later dwelling
If the UK needs to unlock housing for all generations, later dwelling should take its place alongside reasonably priced 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 will probably be a direct strategic advantage of later-living improvement.
This argument has lengthy been championed by Lord Greatest – Co-Chair of the All-Celebration Parliamentary Teams (APPGs) for Housing and Take care of Older Individuals in addition to New Cities – a champion for improved later dwelling improvement, who argued that 10% of latest houses needs to be allotted by LPAs for later dwelling.
What must be finished?
One 12 months on from the Taskforce report, the message is unchanged, however the stakes are greater: with out strengthened planning coverage for later dwelling lodging, the UK is unlikely to unravel 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 inclined to do, however which the housebuilding sector does continuously. LPAs can do extra by recognising the broader advantages of later dwelling 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 dwelling houses to be delivered.
Additional amendments to nationwide planning coverage are as a consequence of be printed within the coming weeks, however will the sector get an early Christmas current?
