§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Brandreth.]
§ 2.36 Pm
§ Mr. Andrew Rowe (Mid-Kent)The variety of the business of the House and the speed with which it has been dispatched have left me gasping slightly, but I shall do my best to address the issue of this Adjournment debate. I confess that I requested such a debate because I was leaned on by my friends at Age Concern—who are celebrating "Age Concern month"—and asked whether I would bring the matter to the attention of the House. I was delighted to do so, because I have long been interested in the concept of lifetime homes and in our building convenient and accessible houses that are fit to live in.
In 1986, I published the results of a seminar that I had conducted, and we also produced a report urging a variety of improvements in the design of modern houses. Although Age Concern has been my prompter in applying for this debate, I should say that the remarks I shall make are not confined to housing for disabled and elderly people. I passionately believe that current housing design is inappropriate for the vast majority of the population, and I hope to make one or two points later in my speech to support that belief.
It is worth reminding my hon. Friend the Minister—as if he needed reminding—that we have just passed the second anniversary of the start of consultation on regulations governing housing design. I have been told that, to celebrate the second birthday, he recently took possession of a cake shaped like a house—which, I am happy to say, was designed with level access to the front door. I hope that he enjoyed the cake very much.
As I said, the Department of the Environment has been consulting the building industry and all other interested parties on whether new regulations should require the industry to make some desirable changes. When we asked when the results of the inquiry would be available, those at the Department told us that they would love to do so but that they could not because they had been swamped by the responses, which numbered about 1,000.
We asked how many people in the Department were dealing with that flood of responses. We were told that one hapless official was trying to wade through it. It is laughable to suggest that having one official deal with such a massive response is a way of giving the issue priority. Even worse, the Department is now saying that it needs to examine the cost of the proposals, but why on earth could an analysis of the costs not have been carried out concurrently over the past two years?
Accessible housing matters, because too many people are prisoners in their own homes. It used to be said that an Englishman's home was his castle but, for far too many, it is a prison. It is extraordinarily difficult for the elderly or the injured to get in and out of their home. I stress that the problem is not confined to the elderly. I have a constituent whose 17-year-old son broke his leg in two places playing rugger and was in plaster from hip to ankle. She said that it nearly killed the family having to get him upstairs to the lavatory because there was none on the ground floor.
Accessibility also matters because the population mix is changing. In 25 years' time, there will be twice as many 75-year-olds as there are now, and the enormous advances 1239 in medical care will mean that many disabled people who would not previously have been able to live at home will be able to do so if their home is in any way suitable. In addition, the whole purpose of the Government's community care policy is to enable people to live at home, but frequently the kind of homes in which they are asked to live makes that extraordinarily difficult. For many people, getting in and out of and around their home is like negotiating an obstacle course.
Change is necessary, because this country's housing stock is expensively inflexible, and the problem is getting worse. In 1980, 800 wheelchair homes, as they were then called, and 5,200 mobility homes were built. By 1993, the numbers had fallen to 247 wheelchair homes and 1,150 mobility homes. That is movement in the wrong direction.
Inflexibility is enormously expensive in terms not only of cost but of time. For example, it can take a year to adapt a home to make it liveable. If new homes were made accessible for all generations, the Government's own figures suggest that it would cost between £100 and £300 to adapt a house, depending on the size. As about 140,000 homes are built each year, adaptation could cost £28 million per annum, but it currently costs £350 million each year to adapt houses.
It has been estimated that as many as one in three homes will need to be adapted in the next 30 years, but if every new home built during that time were built to lifetime standard—we can assume a life expectancy of 60 years, but a hell of a lot of houses in this country last much longer—about £2.337 billion would be saved in that period.
Where does the opposition lie? I think that the building industry is the source of it. Builders appear to want to build only the type of homes that their fathers built, except that they use modern materials to do so. There is huge resistance to building level-entry homes, even though it has been proved a thousand times that level entry is convenient for mothers with buggies, old people with shopping trolleys and young kids with bicycles, as well as for people who find going up and down steps almost impossible. It has also been proved time and again that water does not come under the door in a level-entry home, as has been suggested. In any event, if there is a risk of it doing so, something that costs £5.40 can exclude it.
The building industry's interest in this matter is well demonstrated. Age Concern sent to 200 builders a report on the difficulties of older people and a check list on how houses might be better adapted. Two replied—one favourable, the other hostile—whereas, of the architects to whom the report was sent, 95 per cent. replied, as did 85 per cent. of housing associations and 92 per cent. of local authorities. Why are builders so stubbornly hostile?
There are costs, and the biggest single cost in a whole lifetime home programme is the greater space required, for example, for a hallway in which a wheelchair can turn around, or a downstairs lavatory in which it is possible for a disabled person to have a shower as well as use the lavatory. It might mean that, in one hectare, one might lose one housing unit, and that is expensive; I accept that. We need to look at that cost against the cost of the inflexibility that we currently have.
What on earth is stopping the building industry designing into the houses that they build the things that do not cost anything? I have already mentioned level entry. 1240 It does not cost anything in most locations, but it costs a huge amount not to have it: older people fall and stumble, at great cost to themselves and to the national health service; young people frequently cannot have their elderly relatives to stay because of the difficulty of negotiating the steps; and going up and down steep steps is a nightmare for visiting people with wheelchairs.
There is absolutely no reason why electricity sockets should not be placed at a height that all of us can easily reach. In most houses, electricity sockets are accessible to only one member of the family—the infant who crawls on the floor. I understand that infants are discouraged, by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, and others, from putting their little fingers into sockets. Why on earth are sockets not placed at a level where they can be reached easily?
Why are windows not lowered slightly, so that, if somebody is confined to bed or is sitting in a chair, he or she can look out of the window? It would not cost any more. The window could be the same size. It would just be a foot or 18 in lower. Where that is done, the measure is extremely well received.
When these wonderful kitchen units are put in when kitchens are redesigned, it is possible to have adjustable surface heights, which would help people like my old aunt who recently died; because she was small, she used to stand on a rickety stool to preside over the pot on her cooker. By the time she was 95, she had shrunk to the point where she could not see what she was cooking.
To the building industry and to my hon. Friend on the Front Bench I stress that, where these modifications are introduced, nobody notices. That is the interesting bit. I have been to the Joseph Rowntree estate in York, where every house has level entry. If people who drove into that estate without knowing that fact were asked, when they got out of their car, "What is different about this estate?" they would say something like, "It is wonderfully clean," or, "It is very nice." They would not say, "Isn't it interesting that there's not a single step to be seen?" These changes will not put off potential buyers brought up by the building industry to believe that they must have a house just like their grandfather. What is more—this is the crux of the debate—all my contacts in the building world are far more concerned about losing a competitive edge than they are about the minimal basic additional cost that such adaptations might incur.
If everybody was made to build houses for every generation and for convenience for us all, they would all do it. It is just because they are frightened of adding perhaps £150 to the cost of their house that they will not do it. That is part of the reason.
Not only Age Concern but every other group interested in the quality of life of our population wants the consultation to come to a conclusion. They want regulations to be introduced so that we start building houses that are adapted to the changing needs of the population, which will increase over the next century. I very much hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will give us some comfort today.
§ Mr. Nick Raynsford (Greenwich)I am grateful to the hon. Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) and the Minister for allowing me to make a short contribution. I pay tribute 1241 to the hon. Member for raising this important subject and for explaining in a lucid and persuasive way why it is essential that we make progress with the concept of lifetime homes. We are talking about raising standards and reducing obstacles for people with reduced mobility, whether temporary or long-lasting, that prevent them from being able to use houses.
Although adaptations can be carried out in certain cases, they are often expensive and time-consuming, and they can only be carried out in the individual's home. That does not help a person who wants to be able to visit friends and who will have great difficulty in doing so if the entry makes it impossible for him to get easy access, or if there is no space for his wheelchair to turn around.
The concept of lifetime homes is creating a framework for the future which will remove obstacles for people with reduced mobility, in terms of accessing not only their home but other people's. It must be right; there is a case for action. Consultation has been going on for two years and there is no question in Labour Members' minds, as is also the case with the hon. Member for Mid-Kent, that the new part M regulations must be introduced without further delay. This subject should not have dragged on for so long, and I hope that the Minister can give us some reassurance that the Government, even though time is running out before the general election, will act quickly so that there is no need to wait until the election of a different Government for the introduction of the new regulations.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. James Clappison)I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) on having secured a debate on a subject in which he has long taken an interest. His speech exemplified that interest and his knowledge of the subject. I appreciate what he said about the Government's approach towards the extension of part M of the building regulations.
I am sure that my hon. Friend appreciates that we need to strike the right balance between costs and benefits to ensure that house buyers get worthwhile improvements for any additional costs they may be asked to pay. As my hon. Friend has said, the Government received more than 1,000 responses to the consultation, giving diverse opinions. Assessment of the responses has been a long and complex task, which is continuing. The comments we have received about the costs of the proposals require further work, because the Government have a duty to produce a compliance cost assessment for the extension of the regulations. Without such an assessment, the Government would face heavy criticism from the business sector.
My hon. Friend questions why we did not calculate costings at the time of issuing the consultation exercise—concurrently, as he put it. My answer to him is that we did. However, the responses from house builders consistently expressed concern that the Department's compliance cost assessment had underestimated the costs of the proposals, particularly for smaller, low-cost units and high-density schemes, typically on infill sites. My hon. Friend the Minister for Construction, Planning and Energy Efficiency met the House Builders Federation to discuss their concerns and agreed to a further, 1242 short independent study into the cost and design implications for those particular schemes. The study will be carried out jointly with the House Builders Federation.
To date, we have written to eight local authorities asking for their help in selecting suitable schemes for the study. Once that information has been received, we shall be able to let the contract. It is expected to run for some three months, but clearly we cannot give a completion date until we have let the work.
Of course we are sympathetic to the needs of disabled and elderly people with mobility problems, but the vast majority of them will not wish to move from their existing housing, so regulating to improve accessibility in new homes would have no impact on their lives. We believe that grants to allow the elderly and disabled to carry out essential modifications to their home are an effective way in which to help people with mobility problems. I am sure that my hon. Friend, with his knowledge of the subject, will be aware of disabled facilities grants, and the form in which they emerged from last year's legislation.
Disabled facilities grants payable by local housing authorities play an important role in providing help to elderly and disabled people who need essential adaptations such as modifications to their homes to provide better access into and around the home and to provide suitably adapted facilities for cooking and washing. They enable many people to remain in their homes and to manage as independently as possible. I am pleased to say that local authorities have approved more than 125,000 disabled facilities grants since they were introduced in 1990.
As a clear demonstration of our commitment to ensure that disabled and elderly people continue to receive the help that they need to enable them to live comfortably in their homes, we retained mandatory disabled facilities grant in an otherwise discretionary renovation grant system under part I of the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996. The hon. Member for Greenwich (Mr. Raynsford), who is a veteran of the Act, will be aware of those provisions. We have also made a number of improvements designed to provide more help to those least able to afford costly adaptations.
Authorities now have discretion to pay grant above the £20,000 limit where costly adaptations are needed. Help is now available for works to make the home safe for a disabled occupant or other household members such as children. It will benefit households where a disabled person has behavioural problems and may be a danger to himself and others in the home. Furthermore, we have relaxed the means test to ensure that other household members are not penalised when the disabled occupant applies for grant. Disabled people are also eligible for home repair assistance, which provides speedy help with small works of repair, improvement or adaptation.
That is not the only way in which we are providing assistance to disabled people. We are also helping them through the work of the home improvement agencies, which have an important role in helping elderly and disabled people and those on low incomes to carry out improvement works to their property to enable them to stay in the comfort and security of their own homes.
The importance of the work of the agencies is reflected in the Government's decision to continue the grant programme for at least another five years from April 1995. Our commitment is further demonstrated by the fact 1243 that £4.8 million has been provided in 1996–97 to fund the home improvement agency movement. That represents an increase of 13 per cent. compared with 1995–96. The number of home improvement agencies receiving grant from my Department has increased substantially since 1991.
I heard the comments that have been made about lifetime homes and we are aware of the arguments in support of the benefits of lifetime homes. Although we take a keen interest in new developments, we must be cautious, because lifetime homes tend to be more spacious than ordinary housing and the additional floor space required will add to costs, particularly where land prices are high. We do not consider it worth while to build all homes to the specification of lifetime homes, as only a small number of people are likely to need all the facilities lifetime homes can provide. Many will be older people who wish to move from family housing to smaller homes which are easier to manage.
With the projected increase of more than 4 million new households in England over the next 20 years, there is pressure on us to make the best available use of land for housing.
§ Mr. RoweI hope that my hon. Friend will address the fact that a substantial number of the features that I 1244 suggested not only cost less but take up no more land. Even if we cannot provide lifetime homes for everyone, why on earth can some of the more useful features not be incorporated in the regulations?
§ Mr. ClappisonMy hon. Friend makes an important point. As I said, we are following developments keenly, but we have to consider the wider context and making the best use of the available land for housing given the projected increase in the number of households. Policies that may encourage some people to live in housing that is larger than required will not help us in that respect.
We have done a great deal to assist disabled people in the ways that I have outlined and through the high standards that we expect of social housing through the housing corporation scheme development standards and the work of local authorities in conjunction with registered social landlords. We take into account the needs of elderly and disabled people in all those areas and give them assistance through grants. This subject, especially the extension of part M of the building regulations, is important. I hope that I have explained to my hon. Friend's satisfaction that we are approaching the issue with a keen interest and some caution. We shall certainly reflect on the important points that he has made.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at one minute to Three o'clock.