Exploring the Housing with Care Taskforce report

The Housing with Care Taskforce report "Our Future Homes: Housing that promotes wellbeing and community for an ageing population" was issued last month, a little later than expected while the small matter of a general election was attended to.

The project was launched in May 2023 by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and the Department of Health and Social Care. The Taskforce's aim was to look at expanding the distribution of greater choice, quality and security of housing for older people, led by Professor Emerita of Nursing, Julienne Meyer alongside a committee of 18 experts in a range of fields. Objectives focused on enablers to increase supply and improving the housing options for those in the later stages of their life; better understanding the market for older people's housing within the UK (recognising the ongoing importance of and need to facilitate independent living); the roles of public and private specialised and supported older people’s housing; the importance of the private market for those on a middle or lower income.

The Taskforce was split into three workstreams: 

• People - looking at what people want and need, such as preferences and concerns about housing options. 
• Products - types of housing, design quality, aiding independent living either in specialised or mainstream housing.
• Places - incorporating the levers and partners in local systems to provoke change at local level, including attracting investment generally and with a focus on people on lower.

There is a huge amount of very useful intelligence and detail in the report, far too much to get into most of it here. A brief summary of the Taskforce recommendations is below. Beyond that, some key themes:

The Taskforce's vision starts to set the scene, with focuses around thinking housing, addressing ageing, promoting wellbeing and creating inclusive communities. Where people live is not just about walls and floors, it is about the suitability of accommodation for people at different ages, achieving outcomes which match their needs and wants – which in most cases is to have a home and to live in it for as long as possible, with housing choices focused on want more than need. However, there will always be needs driven elements to housing, particularly for some older people, whether to ensure their wellbeing is protected, to minimise a hospital stay or to keep them close to family and community. Whole systems must focus on these issues, rather than a siloed approach to housing, healthcare, social care, the role of people, services, design and technology to achieve best outcomes at an individual level while scaling good solutions to meet the needs of the many individuals who could benefit.

Something as basic as definitions and consistency of terminology is a key element of the report. This might seem obvious to many but the later living sector does not have strong homogeneity in its use of language to describe offers, services and costs models and would benefit from this changing through. It is also notable that as well as some of the terminology that we in the sector have talked about around consistency for over the years – for example to differentiate IRCs from other typologies, there is also a focus on wider important terminologies – age friendly, dementia-inclusive, faith and culture sensitive, for example.

There is also some good detail about what drives older people to move – or not – and how other jurisdictions like New Zealand have addressed that, having achieved much more mainstream and more market penetrated recognised asset classes in the older person's housing (particularly IRC) space through regulation and sector specific alignment of operating models to things like tenure. The report is a good single point source for learning a bit more of the detail underpinning the current market and where it could go next.

Perhaps as a final attempt to summarise the overall themes of the report, we could group them across three key and heavily self-reinforcing areas of focus:

• The sector needs to grow – we need to find ways to deliver more specialist older people's housing that is well designed - in the broadest sense of design, to include the physical environment, the services, and the wider amenities and community in which it is located - in ways which are viable for people to afford to buy (or rent) and then to live in. Specialist housing will not be the answer for everyone, and the report recognises this, but the market penetration for this part of the wider solution for older people is far too low and we simply need more of it.
• Investment needs to be attracted – which necessitates moving the risk and cost of investment down the demand curve. Regulation can help here – a more regulated sector, if regulation is done right, will add certainty and reduce risk. Embedding the need for housing focused on older people through planning policy and regulation is another example, as is seeking to stimulate new partnerships and bringing the discussion into housing, health and care policy discussions more clearly.
• As well as being able to afford it, the customer base needs to better understand what specialist housing such as IRCs can offer, and how it differs from mainstream housing, retirement housing which differs from IRCs, and indeed from care homes.

If the market grows, these things will happen, and if these things happen the market will grow. This is not a chicken and egg situation. It is more a case of enabling these mutually supporting focuses to aid the creation of a new asset class which could form a key part of the UK's future housing needs. It will be interesting to see what happens next – while Government has said it will carefully consider the content of the report, and that some impending changes, such as to the NPPF, will start to address the recommendations, many in the sector feel that it is for us to continue to drive change rather than wait.

A quick summary of the recommendations – with some paraphrasing and emphasis added by us reflecting our key takeaways:

• Recommendation 1 - Standardise definitions: To enable partnership working and build public understanding, we all need to be speaking the same language.
• Recommendation 2 - Incentivise a wide range of options: senior citizens in the UK are highly diverse. Meaningful choice must be available and accessible to all.
• Recommendation 3 - Ensure more housing is designed for later life so that housing stock meets the needs of older people, including mainstream, community-led, supported living assisted living options - and care homes.
• Recommendation 4 - Create age-friendly, dementia-inclusive, faith and culture-sensitive communities, where the community beyond the front door enables people to live independently and well.
• Recommendation 5 - Expand older people's housing at scale and ensure it is affordable to live in, and viable to finance, build and operate, creating greater incentives for inward investment, and enabling the ‘lower to middle-affluence market’.
• Recommendation 6 - Strengthen planning policies to incentivise and accelerate development of new forms of older people's housing.
• Recommendation 7 - Establish a national information platform and local hubs - accurate and trusted sources of information on options available to them.
• Recommendation 8 - Build consumer confidence – including providing regulatory clarity for providers and potential investors.
• Recommendation 9 - Enhance innovation, research and professional development to generate and embed the greatest value from private and publicly funded research.
• Recommendation 10 - Create collective leadership to drive change – seeking to fully integrate housing, health and care at all levels of the system.