‘Accessible’ new builds are fine to visit, but don’t move in

For those who appreciate the scale of Britain’s housing crisis, it is heartening evidence that we are starting to address the problem.

One question, though, tends to go both unasked and unanswered: how many of these vital new houses will suit disabled people? The figures illustrating the need are, well… thunderous.

According to the Centre for Ageing Better, about 13 million  people in the UK, disabled by age or condition, inhabit unsuitable accommodation, their lives limited and difficult, their independence thwarted. This includes one in five disabled people in social housing.

More than 400,000 wheelchair users in England live in unsuitable homes. Research by the accessible-housing specialists Habinteg Housing Association, which provides nearly 3,500 accessible homes across England, showed that anyone joining a council waiting list for a new-build wheelchair-accessible home could wait 47 years. North of the border, it will take 95 years to meet the existing housing needs of wheelchair users, says Inclusion Scotland.

Roughly 10% of existing housing stock provides the statutory basic minimum for accessibility: level access to the main entrance; flush threshold; downstairs loo; sufficiently wide doorways for a wheelchair. Those four things qualify them as “visitable”. And it’s why so few of my friends aren’t visiting.

More than half (55%) of fit adults feel they couldn’t remain in their current home if they become disabled.

Whichever way you look at it, it’s a mountain of invisible human misery. But what about those acres of new builds? Habinteg answers the question in a report last week. Its analysis shows that while every new house being built over the next 10 years will indeed be “visitable”, 41% of them won’t aspire higher. Visit, but don’t move in. They won’t meet the optional category 2 standard: a step-free living area at entrance level; wider doors, utility rooms, corridors; access to windows; bathrooms and stairs suitable for adapting. And they won’t meet the category 3 standard: fully set up for wheelchair life.

Less than 9% of affordable homes will be category 3 and only 3.3% of homes on the open market. Some councils aren’t planning for any open market category 3s at all. Regional variations mean there’s only one category 3 home per 2,006 people planned in the north-west compared with one per 210 Londoners.

Only regulations or incentives can ensure that supply of accessible houses comes close to meeting demand. Meantime, as we live longer, get frailer, become more disabled, the gap widens. Out of mischief, I asked the Cala Homes website chatbot to find me a wheelchair-accessible home. It could only refer me to a sales rep. Which kind of says it all.

My solution – and, believe me, I fully appreciate how privileged I am – was to build in the garden: flat, warm, easy, safe, roomy accommodation, with a garage-sized wet-room. Bliss. I can therefore testify that moving into a purpose-built disabled house is simply life changing. Everyone deserves to do so.

Committing to blowing our life savings was terrifying. But there was no choice. After 14 years in a wheelchair in a cottage with seven ramps, I was at breaking point even before my husband developed Alzheimer’s. There was nowhere to buy or to rent. And we couldn’t wait 95 years.

The simple fact is that if I hadn’t gone for it, we’d both be in residential care.