My Lords, I am speaking to Amendment 221; I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford for adding their names. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, gave a brilliant exposition of many of the things I was prepared to say, and this amendment is really a prelude to later Amendments 207 and 336. For those two reasons, I will be very brief and save some powder for later debates.
I speak as co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Housing and Care for Older People, and this is about older people’s housing and the local plan. The amendment enables the Secretary of State to require local authorities to bring forward an assessment of the local need for housing for older people as part of the documentation in preparing their all-important local plan. Sadly, such an assessment is currently a rarity in local plans, despite the ever-increasing number of older people, for whom opportunities to downsize, to rightsize, can meet so many health, care and social needs.
Tailor-made housing for older people preserves independence, prevents or postpones the need for residential care, helps people to maintain fitness, combats loneliness and isolation, keeps people out of hospital, saves the NHS and care budgets, frees up family homes for the next generation and more. But we have a national shortfall in homes being built specifically for the older generation. Production is running at fewer than 8,000 homes per year, but demand is estimated at 30,000 to 35,000 homes a year.
The trouble is that the volume housebuilders are not interested. Given the choice, they will stick to building for the less discerning, more profitable market of young buyers and will avoid having to organise the ongoing management arrangements necessary for developments for later living. Since these housebuilders dominate the industry, nothing will change unless there is some pressure on these developers to do better. This amendment would start the process of getting on top of this key issue and is very much part of levelling up in extending healthy life expectancy and reducing
health inequalities. It represents a key step in getting greater momentum behind a national effort to see local plans incorporate requirements for older people’s housing of different sorts.
I hope to build on this case in subsequent amendments but, in the meantime, I give notice that I will pursue the question asked by my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, about the task force on housing for older people. It would be great to hear what progress has been made in that direction. The task force was announced on 25 May 2021 by Chris Pincher, the then Housing Minister, at my all-party parliamentary group meeting. It would be great to hear how that is going, having been launched some two years ago. On that note, I commend this amendment.