How more homes for later living benefit us all

Anchor is England's largest provider of social housing for older people, and the country’s largest not-for-profit operator of residential care homes. With a team of 10,000 colleagues, we serve more than 65,000 residents across almost 1,700 locations and operate in more than 85% of local authorities in England.

We are committed to creating choice and opportunity for our current and future residents, and for the colleagues who are so essential to our services.

Why is this important? We all know that we are ageing as a nation. In the last 40 years, the number of people aged 65 and over has increased by over 3.5 million, an increase of 52%. Today, one in five of us is over 65 and that is projected to increase to one in four in 10 years. This has huge implications for us all, from health and social care provision to pensions, as well as wider societal issues.

Improving longevity should be a cause for celebration but too often the implications are presented in a pejorative way, with older people dismissed as bed-blockers, housing blockers, and pension liabilities. There is a common narrative of inter-generational inequity that holds that older people are the beneficiaries of unearned property wealth and generous pension arrangements - however, this is certainly not true for all older people now, and will certainly not be the case in the future.

House building is rightly a priority of the government, and with more than 10 million people in England aged 65 and over, socially rented and affordable older people’s housing needs to be considered as a part of the mainstream housing offer.

At present, just 0.6% of older people in the UK live in housing designed for later living. Anchor’s Fragmented UK report showed that 35% of those aged over 55 said they would be likely to consider specialist retirement housing. A report by the Housing Learning and Improvement Network (LIN) for the Local Government Association identified a shortfall of 400,000 older people’s properties by 2034. This translates to an estimated need for 50,000 homes for older people to be built each year.

‘Retirement housing’ is itself becoming a misnomer. More than 23% of Anchor residents are in work, and that proportion is likely to increase as more older people want to, or need to, remain in the workplace.

Investment in older peoples’ housing has broad benefits. The provision of age-appropriate housing and support confers significant health and wellbeing benefits on residents, with a consequent decrease in pressure on public services as accidents are reduced, health conditions better supported, and the impacts of loneliness and isolation mitigated. And as well as enabling older people to live independently for longer, each new home for older people frees up housing and surplus bedrooms for younger families and first-time buyers, making housing more accessible and affordable for all. 

The government has laid out its approach to housing to meet its manifesto commitment of 1.5 million new homes over this Parliament. With the proposed reforms to the National Planning Policy Framework currently being consulted on, there are several simple opportunities to encourage development of more older people’s housing, to deliver the homes our ageing society needs, and free up homes and capacity across the sector. These include:

• Creation of a new planning classification for older peoples’ housing.
• 10% of Homes England and GLA’s capital funding budgets allocated to social rented housing for older people.
• 10% allocation in local plans for housing for older people.
• An overarching strategy and more funding for housing with care, recognising the cost/benefit to central government.

At Anchor, we want to meet this challenge through our programme to deliver an average of 500 homes a year over a rolling 10-year period, with at least 70% of those homes being for social rent. These additional homes will benefit the whole of society by helping people to live healthier and independent lives for longer as well as freeing up family homes for the next generation.

Together, we can transform our society and futureproof later life, to benefit not only the older people of today but those of tomorrow, and to fulfil the potential of our ageing society.