The Lifemark New Zealand story

by Geoff Penrose

This is the story of Lifemark, a not-for-profit organisation that has battled to change the way housing is built in New Zealand. It’s a tale of perseverance and how, like a sailing boat, you keep tacking into the wind to get to your destination.

To begin let’s look at the challenge.

The housing market in New Zealand is big and complex. The market is valued at $1.5 trillion and consists of around 1,800,000 dwellings with around 30,000 added every year. There has been a history of poor regulatory choices such as the failure to include insulation, the failure to produce water-tight buildings and more recently the need to upgrade the seismic strengthening of all buildings. Set against this misery, accessibility was also virtually excluded. Whilst there is clearly a shortage of accessible housing across New Zealand, the lack of coherent statistics makes it difficult to quantify this issue. What is also very clear is that market forces do not deliver accessible homes. From a regulatory perspective, the Building Act (2004) has no residential access performance requirements and the New Zealand standard for Access and Mobility NZS 4121 (2001) ignores residential dwellings. Even Councils struggled to encourage accessibility as independent hearing panels simply rule that any imposed Universal Design or Access conditions infringe section 18 of the Building Act that meant you cannot require performance criteria above the building code.

The net result was that by 2008, probably around 99% of the New Zealand housing stock was inaccessible, if we define access as including a level entry threshold, usable bathroom on the same entry level and decent spatial design for ease of movement.

We were simply not building houses that way and there was no prospect of change.

As a result, and as a mechanism to drive change, Lifemark was formed by CCS Disability Action, a pan disability organisation that was established in 1935 and delivers services to 5,000 disabled people across 27 offices. The role of Lifemark was to work with the construction and design sectors and champion accessible housing.

We began to work with the retirement sector who quickly understood the need to include Access features and further work revealed that the framework of Universal Design delivered wider functionality and offered greater market acceptance. We commenced work with Summerset Retirement Villages in 2009 and we still provide audit services to every Summerset Village today.

In 2012 we gifted a set of 80 voluntary Universal Design standards to the construction and design industry that incorporated a tiered system of performance.

The uptake was mixed with many designers simply selecting “some” of universal design features that they liked. This resulted in homes having an accessible bathroom on the second floor with no lift. Retrospectively this is largely to be expected as Architectural qualifications only included a ½ day option on accessibility across a 4-year degree. The national peak bodies for construction and design also largely ignored Universal Design and there were few professional development modules on this topic.

Against this backdrop, the next few years for us were not pretty. We received some Government funding and then we simply grafted our way into an existence.

We coerced, courted, encouraged and enthused the industry to use our services. We managed to get over 150 organisations to join as members, and while many initially liked the idea, the majority still found it to hard to convince their project owners to include Universal Design certification. The framework would be used for a disabled client and it was still not seen as mainstream. The default position was also to build to the minimum, which was seen to also be the cheapest.

Lifetime value and lifecycle costs were not part of these conversations.

In 2016 we introduced an upgraded set of standards and centralised all advisory and certification services. We aligned our review process to fit the construction process and invested in new technology with our own customised web-based assessment tools. We targeted the owners of new developments and espoused the virtues of Universal Design.

We employed staff with a lived experience of disability that became our primary user experts so we could deliver better advice. While we were happy to assist individual owners, strategic change happens on a large scale and we looked to influence larger scale developments.

The market changed as well.

Councils were required to think about their long-term plans and as the majority of councils faced an ageing population, they needed to put in place strategies to address these issues.

In July 2016 the Thames Coromandel District Council introduced a change to their District Plan. They offered an incentive (increased site coverage) if you built to a Lifemark Universal Design standard as certified by Lifemark. We provided the administration and worked with the Designers, no cost to Council and no objection from planning commissioners as this was a voluntary initiative.

The Hauraki Council changed their District plan and more recently the Hamilton Council went one better and agreed to offer reduced development fees to inner city developments if they meet the Lifemark Universal Design standards as part of their people focussed housing strategy.

The private sector also came on board. Fletcher Living, the largest developer in NZ, delivered award winning designs to a One Central development in Christchurch that would deliver over 900 homes over the next 10 years and included Lifemark certification to over 50% of the dwellings. One of their next developments will increase this to 100%.

Public housing is another sector where Universal Design is effective. Often these residents are the more vulnerable members of society who can have a wide range of health issues and who significantly benefit from tenure that is safe, secure and accessible.

We work with a number of public housing providers, some of whom also require that 100% of their homes are Lifemark-rated and this becomes a contractual requirement for the building companies. The tiered performance system also helped support their asset management goals by quantifying the different level of accessibility within their housing stock.

The Human Rights Commission recently defined that all New Zealanders have the right to a Decent home and that the definition of a Decent home was a home that was habitable, affordable and accessible.

Finally, the message was getting through.

Over the last 5 years we have formally certified over 2% of all new building consents and we recognise that another 3% are built to these standards but without a formal certification. In total, 1 in 20 homes are now being built to an accessible standard.

However, there is still a long way to go.

To help provide solutions to the market we have worked with product manufacturers and suppliers. We provide knowledge though an interactive Age Lab training experience and this has resulted in some clever new products being delivered to the market.

For instance, tapware product designs have been changed to be more usable for people with arthritic hands, slip resistant floor tile ranges have been clearly identified, strip drains for bathrooms are now easily specified and installed, grab rails come in a range of different colours and are integrated with shower slide rails where appropriate. One manufacturer is still developing a world first hinge door that is pneumatically sealed and self-draining. All of these products come from the Universal Design stable where aesthetics and functionality go hand in hand. These are not specialised products, but mainstream products that are simply easier and safer to use.

We occasionally get asked to review commercial and public buildings and accept these projects on one condition. We are looking at the ceiling, not the floor. In other words, we can provide advice on the legal minimums, but all our report will focus on the principles of best practice. We recently reviewed New Zealand’s National stadium Eden Park, who along with requirements specified by FIFA for the 2022 Women’s World Cup, also wanted to review their facilities and services against Universal Design best practice. To experience those improvements, you will need to attend the world cup… tickets available soon!

In summary we started and still work with the Retirement sector because their needs are obvious. Councils are slowly using incentives to encourage the designs that are future focussed, and the private sector is starting to understand the advantages of building to a Universal Design (UD) standard for all. Because regulatory change is slow, we hope that this approach will make UD the informal standard, you don’t have to do it ….but your competitor will.

It is as commentators like to say, a race without a finish line, but we will continue to focus on improvement, making the built environment easier and more usable for more people, challenging assumptions and working together on better solutions.

Hopefully soon we will be sailing down wind for a while, wouldn’t that be nice?

For more information, please visit our website www.lifemark.co.nz