Your Home
Lifetime Homes and you
Lifetime Homes offer many advantages to disabled people, older people, family carers and parents with young children. They are designed to be adaptable to meet changing needs, such as a member of the household becoming disabled or having an illness or injury that affects his or her mobility. In this situation, being in a Lifetime Home can avoid the necessity for major adaptations or a move to a more suitable property. The design of Lifetime Homes also makes it easy for wheelchair users to visit the property, although it does not necessarily give full wheelchair access throughout the home.
The growth in Lifetime Homes over the next few years should mean that older people and people who become disabled in mid-life can more easily stay in their own home and avoid a move to residential care or alternative housing. There should also be significantly reduced expenditure on home adaptations and savings in healthcare due to people being more confident, relaxed and able to cope in their environment. This will, in turn, benefit relatives and friends who provide care and support.
In addition to these specific benefits, having a home that is designed to the Lifetime Homes standard adds value due to the ‘easy living’ features such as level access, wider doorways and extra space in bathrooms.
Moving to a Lifetime Home
A number of organisations have been campaigning for Lifetime Homes for many years. Finally in 2008 the Government decided that all new, publicly funded housing in England will be built to the Lifetime Homes standard by 2011 (In Wales and Northern Ireland, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Housing already require the Lifetime Homes standard in their funded developments). The Government also want all housing built and sold by private developers in England to be Lifetime Homes by 2013 and may regulate towards this if there is too little progress by 2010.
At present, there are relatively few Lifetime Homes across the country. Most of these are recently built, although a small number of housing associations voluntarily adopted the standard some time ago. Now that the standard is to become compulsory for housing association developments, there will be a significant increase in the proportion of social rented and shared ownership homes built as Lifetime Homes in the next five years.
In the private sector, the growth in Lifetime Homes is likely to be patchy, with some enthusiastic developers and architects embracing the standard while others resist it. At this stage, there is no ready way of identifying the Lifetime Homes in your area, or even knowing how many there are. The information is not generally held by local authorities, although this should change as more developments come on stream and authorities will be expected to check that the standard is being met.
With regard to private homes for sale, the Lifetime Homes ‘badge’ will be evident for new properties but will not be obvious for re-sale properties unless and until vendors and estate agents make it a particular selling point.
Making your home more accessible
If you need to make your home more accessible, it may be possible to include some of the 16 design criteria of the Lifetime Homes standards. Full conversion to a Lifetime Home will not be possible for the great majority of homes, as some of the features require extensive adaptation (if possible at all) if they are not designed in when the property is first built. Advice on adapting your home and applying for a Disabled Facilities Grant (DFG) is available on local authority websites (but please note that most DFG applications are means-tested, unless they are on behalf of a disabled child). The key professionals who can offer technical advice are occupational therapists, who may either be employed by the local authority/health agency or work privately.