Refurbishments
Age-friendly housing – shaping up for the future
Mike Turner, executive director of Ian Williams - one of the UK’s largest independently-owned property services companies - discusses the role of making residential care homes, assisted living facilities and individual properties fit-for-purpose by providing physical adaptations
The challenge of planning and delivering care and housing for an ageing population is not new. It is a major theme for us all, encompassing every housing, care and health provider in the private and public sectors. With the backdrop of Covid-19, our healthcare sector and looking after older people has never been more under the spotlight. With the increasing demands on
funding – set to get only more challenging - care establishment providers are now having to seriously confront the fact that not only do we collaboratively need to future-proof housing for this burgeoning sector, in essence we need to improve what we have got. Outdated, unsuitable and under- supplied, housing for older people in our society is seriously under-catered. According to the Elderly Accommodation Counsel, there are 730,000 retirement housing units across the UK and more than half of these homes and facilities were built or last renovated 30 years ago. Furthermore, one in five people in the UK will be 65 or older by 2030. By any measure, we are failing miserably
to deliver, so it is no surprise that we need to look at future-proofing the design and construction of new facilities and adapting existing care homes so they are fit for purpose. Now is the time to look
at better ways to support this drive for safe, healthy homes for this fast-growing demographic.
Collaboration and understanding the market drivers To achieve this, specialists in new build developments and property refurbishment and maintenance experts all need to work together to devise solutions to counter the obvious shortfall in suitable housing for an ageing population. The first step is to understand the drivers of this market, such as:
By working with Erosh, the national network for older people’s housing and support services, we have developed a guide: Sensitive Contractors, which we hope will soon become a sector-wide best practice guide
March 2021 •
www.thecarehomeenvironment.com
l What are the barriers to supply affordable and secure housing?
l What should the design, provision and maintenance of homes include?
l What are the drivers for older people to remain in their homes or move to specialist communities?
l When do we build and when do we improve properties?
l What are the implications of the cost of care through people not moving to specialist housing early enough?
There are currently more questions
than answers but intelligent and transparent debate can guide us as a sector. Precisely what this ‘remake, remodel’ strategy looks like is something Ian Williams is working closely on with The Housing Forum’s Older Person’s Housing Working Group. This includes providing evidence to the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Housing and Care for Older People. The core message is that if we can understand the specialist requirements of older people’s housing and communities,
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