INTELLIGENCE
Long-term planning
FEBRUARY 2021
Architect Julia Park, Head of Housing Research at Levitt Bernstein and Associate Director for Homes at the Centre for Ageing Better, makes the case for accessible housing to be more than an afterthought
BUILDING ENGINEER
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D
espite the inescapable fact that, unless we die young, we will all grow old, we have been painfully slow to factor ageing into the way we design and construct the built environment. Even in those parts of the world where older people are revered for their wisdom and cared for by families, little thought has been given to eliminating the physical barriers that limit many peoples’ lives. This stubborn laziness has allowed the view to become entrenched that older people, and those living with disabilities, are better off at home. Ironically, we failed there too; the concept of accessible housing is barely 30 years old. Lifetime Homes, a 16-point standard devised to make life easier for older people, was developed by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in the early 1990s. Though renowned and respected, as a voluntary standard it gained relatively little traction. In 1999, a watered-down version was taken into regulation through Part M, which, until then, had dealt only with public buildings. It was an important step, but it wasn’t until 2015, when the government-led Housing Standards Review concluded, that the requirements came close to where they needed to be. And there was a catch. Setting a new precedent, two higher levels of accessibility (referred to as optional requirements) were added to the meagre baseline that, among other things, required step-free access to the main entrance (unless it was too difficult) and a small ground-floor WC (unless there were no habitable rooms on that floor). That was renamed M4(1) Category 1: Visitable dwellings and remains the default. The two optional requirements (one very
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similar to the full version of Lifetime Homes) and the other for wheelchair users (now M4(2) Category 2: Accessible and adaptable dwellings and M4(3) Category 3: Wheelchair user dwellings, respectively) have to be justified before being invoked. Local planning authorities must first prove need and viability, and then define the proportion of new housing that should meet each of these categories in their area. If you are thinking it all feels a bit complicated, you’re right. Informally, local authorities were expected to require something like 3050% of new homes to meet Category 2 and 5-10% to meet Category 3. In reality, the proportions vary from 0% to 100%. While London (which has one of the country’s youngest populations) requires 90% of new homes to meet Category 2 and the remaining 10% to meet Category 3, many local authorities still require nothing more than the baseline, partly because developers fight back if they try.
Quality of living
main features required for even the lowest level of accessibility, and 85% of today’s homes will still exist in 2050. Having ignored the implications of rising life expectancy for so long, we have a huge amount of catching up to do. Covid-19 and the climate change emergency reinforce the need to do better. The lockdowns that continue to curtail our lives have given all of us a glimpse of what, for many older and disabled people, is an everyday reality. Our homes have been tested and many haven’t scored well. Factor in age-related mobility problems with the daily challenges that arise from living in a home that fails to meet our basic daily needs, and the shortcomings intensify. In terms of climate change, the need to reduce embodied carbon is the primary driver. Experts tell us that climate change demands that every new home we build today should last at least 200 years. During
“Only 9% of homes provide the main features required for even the lowest level of accessibility”
This is one of many reasons why the recent government consultation inviting feedback on the proposition to make Category 2 the minimum requirement is so welcome. The demographic evidence is overwhelming: by 2050, one in four people will be over 65; only 9% of existing homes provide the four
18/01/2021 14:04
