Most of the UK’s housing stock was neither designed nor built with the needs of disabled people in mind. The obvious option would be to apply adaptations to existing buildings but another way is to consider those designed with features already built in.
Housing developers and associations are recognising the needs of their properties to be far more universal in order to make them appropriately safe and comfortable to a wider customer base, including disabled people.
Building Regulations regarding accessibility, specifically Part M (4), Category 2, are optional, not obligatory, which is disappointing given that it really only points to universal features, such as entrance pathways and so on.
Recommendations
On the other hand, some local planning policies do require that a set of principles known as the Lifetime Homes Standard, is adopted in new developments. This set of 16 criteria for building design and construction means that any home built to them is suitable for a wide range of people, including older and disabled people.
The criteria include directions over external access to the building, ground floor toilets, and wheelchair turning space. They also carry the notion of ‘future-proofing’, hence ‘lifetime’ and include designing for a time when an area downstairs may be required for conversion into a bedroom, for example.
Future
The future of housing in the UK looks set, under these increasingly popular measures, to improve for disabled people aiming to buy a new home with long term suitability. Newly built homes are much more likely to have had universal features applied to them such as downstairs toilets and stepfree access, wider doors, as well as flexible layouts that can adapt with changing circumstances. Rather than adapting an older property, disabled people now have a broader choice of new build options, particularly if they use purchasing schemes designed specifically to support them. (See below.)
Housing developers and associations are recognising the needs of their properties to be far more universal in order to make them appropriately safe and comfortable to a wider customer base, including disabled people.
Buying New Homes
The Government has set up a scheme specifically to support disabled people in the process of purchasing a new home. The Home Ownership for People with Long-Term Disabilities (HOLD) is available in England and uses a shared ownership principle (part-rent/part-buy). You could buy a share of your home (between 25% and 75% of the home’s value) and pay rent on the remaining share.
You could buy a home through the HOLD scheme if you have a long-term disability and your household earns £80,000 a year or less outside London, or your household earns £90,000 a year or less in London. You must be either a first-time buyer, or someone that used to own a home but can’t afford to buy one now or are an existing shared owner looking to move.
(You can only apply for the HOLD scheme if the homes available in the other shared ownership schemes don’t meet your needs, for example, you need a ground-floor home.) www.ownyourhome.gov.uk
Similar schemes exists in Scotland. The Low-cost Initiative for First Time Buyers (LIFT) can be used by disabled people to buy their first property or to buy a property which is better suited to their particular needs if they are already a homeowner. www.mygov.scot/new-supply-sharedequity-scheme/overview/
Scottish disabled people that want to buy a new build home from a housing association or local council but can’t afford the total cost, might also be able to get help through the New Supply Shared Equity (NSSE) scheme. Disabled people are given priority status.
www.gov.scot
