Older People’s Housing – the Pandemic and recent Planning Changes

Earlier this year I took over the chair of the Retirement Housing Group; an association of developers, operators, advisory bodies  and consultants involved with the wide range of specialist housing for older people. I was assured that chairing this group would not be a hugely demanding task but, with the pandemic raging, that turned out to be not entirely true.

There are 12 million people in the UK in the 65+ group and of those 400,000 live in care homes. Although many homes are unscathed by coronavirus the trials of the sector as a whole have been well publicized and must before long be the subject for a full enquiry. There is also though a much larger group of about one million older people living in other forms of specialist accommodation such as sheltered and extra care housing. It was with the welfare of this second group that RHG was particularly concerned at the start of the pandemic, seeking and disseminating advice on supplies of PPE and lobbying for the rights of the 70000 care and support staff to be recognized as key workers with access to testing.

With these urgent objectives and the benefit of Zoom, RHG brought together a group drawn from the many other previously uncoordinated representative bodies in the sector, including the Home Builders Federation and the Association of Retirement Community Operators, to lobby the Care Minister, Helen Whately, in a series of calls which won her support, with the role of staff properly recognized  for the first time  and a  statement that “ Retirement and Extra Care housing developments across the country - whatever their size, or whether private or not-for-profit – are playing a vital role in protecting the most vulnerable in our country”.

This success in protecting older people is, at least on the basis of evidence available so far, very clear to see in figures from McCarthy and Stone, the biggest operator in the sector. Of their 438 schemes half had no cases at all and only two had more than two cases, while out of 20000 elderly residents only 33 died. Compared to the 65+ group nationwide the number of deaths was half of what might be expected and for the 80+ group just 15%. Cognatum, another major provider with 82 schemes and about 4000 residents, had only 12 isolated cases and no deaths.

With influential supporters including former housing minister Mark Prisk, and with the proven success of specialist housing in providing a safe environment for older residents, we next lobbied the chancellor for a reduction in stamp duty to encourage would be down-sizers. In this too we met with success although it appears we may have been pushing at an open door.

Recently though things have taken a less favourable turn with the publication of the planning white paper and an adverse high court decision in the Rectory Homes case. With the white paper we were deeply disappointed to find that there is not a single mention of the special housing needs of a group who in the next 20 years will make up 25% of the population. This is potentially a huge problem not just for the elderly but for the housing market as a whole. It is well-established that many older owner-occupiers still living in what were family homes would be keen to down-size if suitable smaller houses were available but this will not happen if the planning system ignores their needs.

Developers of extra care and other forms of housing for older people have always struggled to compete for sites because of the high costs associated with the provision of communal space – up to 30% of total area – for dining, recreation, care and management, and planning policy needs to recognize this problem. Over recent years this problem has been overcome in many cases by an acceptance that schemes with significant levels of care provision  should be classed as C2 and be exempt from affordable housing requirements. Moves to have this acceptance formalised by the introduction of a specific use-class for older people’s housing have always fallen on deaf ears though and the white paper shows no sign of a new approach. To make matters worse the recent high court appeal judgement against Rectory Homes seems likely to shift all forms of housing with care firmly back into class C3. The proposed increase in  the affordable housing threshold to 40 or 50 units does nothing to offset the damage this judgement could cause because extra care schemes, to operate efficiently must include at least 60 units, and because the raised threshold applies across the board, leaving specialist developers competing, once again, with general housebuilders whose costs are far lower.

There is of course a particular irony,  just when the arguments for the expansion of  specialist older people’s  housing have been so amply demonstrated, that any such expansion may be thrown into reverse by a single judgement and a major planning review that looks for a quick fix rather than addressing the long term needs of the country. I see a lot more intensive lobbying ahead for the Retirement Housing Group and the other bodies with which it has co-operated so successfully over the last six months.