Meeting the future housing challenge in England and Wales
The Challenge
The housing sector in England and Wales faces many challenges,
including meeting the demand for affordable housing, tackling
homelessness, geographical disparities in supply and the need for a
diversity of tenures.
Over the last three decades of the 20th century, the number of
households in England and Wales increased by 30 per cent, while the
level of new house building fell by 50 per cent. The number of
households is projected to continue growing in England by 209,000 a
year to 2026, of which 72 per cent will be single person
households.
This growth is linked to our ageing society. In his report on
the costs of social care for the King’s Fund, Sir Derek Wanless
identified that in the next 20 years, the proportion of the
population aged 85 and over in England is set to increase by
two-thirds, compared with a 10 per cent growth in the overall
population. This will significantly increase demand for accessible
housing.
In a 2006 Ipsos/Mori poll commissioned by the Disability Rights
Commission (DRC) 90 per cent of the public said that they
anticipated, in the event of needing support, that they would
receive social care services to enable them to stay in their own
home rather than be placed in (increasingly costly) residential
care. Yet in England there are already 300,000 people living in
unsuitable housing who require accessible or adapted accommodation.
This figure is almost evenly split between owner-occupiers and
social housing tenants.
Systems of allocation within social housing are failing to
ensure that accessible or adapted properties go to the people who
need them most. Many local authorities have no mechanism for
profiling the accessibility of housing stock or matching supply
with demand. The choices available to people requiring accessible
or adapted housing are therefore severely restricted.
With demand already far outstripping supply, and growing
steeply, action is required now to avert a new housing crisis.
Improving the supply of accessible housing, matched with support
where needed, would save NHS resources. Research by the spinal
injuries charity Aspire shows that it can cost around £1,000 a day
to support a patient in a hospital spinal injury unit. In a single
18-month period, one spinal unit spent over £1.3 million because
patients were facing delayed discharge – in 47 per cent of cases,
because of a lack of suitable housing for them to move into.
With more accessible housing and an improved system of adapting
existing stock, the NHS could make substantial savings. Similarly,
improved housing design can prevent falls – and hospitalisation –
for people with mobility and visual impairments.
Disabled people are twice as likely to be social housing
tenants, less likely to own their own homes and more likely to live
in ‘non-decent’ homes. Poor housing impacts on adults’ and
children’s health and well-being.
Between 1997 and 2004, the number of households accepted as
being in priority need by local authorities due to ‘physical
disabilities’ increased by 24 per cent, and due to mental health
problems by 65 per cent.
This paper proposes policy solutions aimed at meeting the
housing challenge in England and Wales. It is part of a series
offering the DRC proposals for a future public policy agenda.
This paper is relevant to England and Wales only. There is a
companion Agenda paper on housing in Scotland.
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