Building for the future with Abdul Ravat: “we need a long-term housing plan”

This blog was originally published on LinkedIn (opens new window) in November 2024 and is written by Abdul A Ravat, Abbeyfield Living Society & Chair, National Housing Federation’s (NHF) older persons housing group.

How big is the scale of need in the senior living sector at the moment?

The majority of older people do and will want to remain in their existing, mainstream homes. Part of the trick for government and communities is how to help them remain in those homes for as long as they want to, because there’s a big challenge there in the sense that the current fabric of existing stock needs a lot of work.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG), and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), have started to look at this and are now thinking about how greater flexibilities with  the annual £625m disabled facilities grant (opens new window), can be used to improve mobility, to improve how people experience dementia in their homes, and to improve more accessibility. These kinds of accommodations are likely to provide a more affordable alternative for many than wholesale relocation or rehousing into extra care with supported on-site facilities – particularly where there is dwindling supply and availability.

There’s anything between 527,000 and 651,000 units of existing sheltered housing (opens new window) stock equating to a £40bn asset base, in the UK and a lot of that is 40, 50, 60 years old or more. The estates are looking tired. And the thing is, there’s no avenue for housing associations, or smaller community organisations, to access any financial incentive or support to upgrade that stock, repurpose it, and enable them to be retained for use by future generations. This is a big issue that we have been exploring with Lord Best and the APPG on Housing and Care for Older People.

The problem is that this creates the preconditions for disposal, and that doesn’t solve anything – particularly when we know what the scale of need is with the Mayhew Review (opens new window) telling us that 50,000 new older people’s homes need to be built each year.  Through my work with the NHF’s Older Person Housing Group I have received data from Homes England showing that between April 2022 to March 2024 only 5,790 homes for older people were actually delivered when even against the conservative target of 30,000 per annum from the APPG is required, which is disappointing.  Furthermore, barely 500 homes have come forward through Homes England’s Strategic Partners who have received circa 80% of the total AHP funding.  This represents system failure and the consequences of which will be felt for many people and for a prolonged period in the future.

Where does the private sector come into this?

The supply – demand dynamics are of course creating private sector interest. We’ve seen the growth of Integrated Retirement Communities (IRCs), the likes of Inspired Villages, and others. One of the things I’ve been having conversations about with the market, government and stakeholders is around the tenure mix that might be put forward in these ‘super’ developments, including considering engaging with Homes England, Greater London Authority etc for some of the homes to be grant funded and therefore create that real mix of community and tenure.

Providers like McCarthy Stone and Pegasus are looking at these kinds of opportunities and have become investment partners with Homes England, but we need more of this cross collaboration. The sector can be doing much more with Homes England and with the GLA where affordability is at its sharpest.

What are the opportunities for public – private partnerships?

You need to be a particular kind of entity to be able to bid for grant funding and become an investment partner. That’s not an easy process, but it’s not insurmountable. Historically, the bureaucracy around grant funding was so complicated that a lot of the new entrants were scared away from it, and the solution in some cases was to bring units into the funding programme but through housing association partners. So there is lots of collaboration that’s possible where housing associations can work with the private sector to help them achieve their ambitions and secure new funding opportunities.

How does this work in a for-profit context?

The key thing that regulators want to see is that there’s no leakage of grant funding into other businesses. That’s where they get a bit jittery. I sit on the board of a for-profit provider (Funding Affordable Homes Housing Association), and we deploy institutional investment which is then topped up with grant funding to create opportunities for affordable housing provision – so long as there is a social impact to what we do. This means we don’t just look at anything. We have a range of stock provision; general needs, shared ownership, addressing homelessness, addressing the needs of abuse victims, and older people as well. We work with the local housing association to then manage that stock on a long-term basis, so we don’t have the direct relationship, but we use capital to ‘do more’.

At a time when there are a lot of housing associations having to look at their existing stock and improving service to their residents, the new Government needs all partners that can deliver. This needs incentivisation and a level playing field for the ‘for-profit providers to come forward and deliver the kinds of numbers that are required.  I have been discussing with Homes England and the MHCLG that creating a level playing to grant trance payments that would help improve development cash flows for the ‘for-profit providers’.

What are some of the other issues holding back delivery of older people’s housing at scale?

Planning and use case classifications are a problem – whether something is a C1 or a C2 etc and has the time come a nuanced C2 and a half. We need some clarity from government and the local planning authorities on that front. One of the challenges here is that I don’t think local authorities help themselves, to be frank. We have constant quibbles with local authorities around Section 106 for instance.

There are ways to mitigate these planning issues. We’ve undertaken things like Planning Performance Agreements, which are much better I think and a less confrontational approach with the local authority during planning.

There are also issues around housing need assessments. Local authorities are generally pretty poor at demonstrating what their housing need is. And interestingly, the Older People’s Housing Taskforce (opens new window) led by the work of Professor Julienne Meyer has made the recommendation that there needs to be some ownership on the part of local authorities, whether at a local, regional or sub-regional level, around what the need is in their area and how that is going to be delivered. Without that, there’s no certainty. The Taskforce report was delivered earlier this year but we’ve not seen it made public yet.

What is the appetite from developers to deliver these kinds of schemes?

Developers can shy away from certain types of provision. Too often when older people’s schemes are coming forwards there’s this distinction between care and extra care. The likes of Homes England will fund ‘extra care’ but not fund ‘care’ provision. The question is how we make these schemes and the funding more in line with how people’s health, housing and care needs will change as they get older.  We need a national conversation around revenue support just as much as capital intervention.

As an example, we’ve got a wonderful scheme in Bingley, West Yorkshire where Abbeyfield The Dales ‘Fern House’, which won the 2018 RICS best residential scheme, where an older resident comes in and is engaged on things like community services, facilities to address issues like loneliness and interaction. On that site there are 49 extra care one and two bedroom apartments.  As people find that they have difficulty maintaining independence, the decision might be that you move into one of those homes where meals are provided, and you’re given the daily support based on your need. But there are also 30 CQC funded homes which are more care focused, including dementia.  Because it’s all under one organisation, there is that continuity across the different stages of people’s lives. This was the first scheme that Professor Meyer and the Taskforce came and visited.

What do you hope to see from the new government on this?

Key asks for me and the NHF are as follows:

• We have an ageing population and the time to provide adequate housing to meet need is now. If the need for older people's housing is not met, this will have a big impact on the health and social care systems. Meeting the need in terms of new supply and regeneration will have a positive effect on outcomes for older people's health and wellbeing.
• We need older people's housing to feature in the government's long term housing plan, and local housing plans, and hope to hear more from the government on older people's and other specialist housing soon (including in the NPPF).
• There needs to be earmarked capital funding and an adequate rent settlement for more housing associations to start to develop and regenerate older people's housing and accessible housing. There is need for older people's housing but not demand for outdated older people's housing that isn't fit for purpose anymore.
• We need government funding to focus on regeneration on a par with new build, not as an add on to new build. While homes are not being built because of funding challenges, they are being lost because they can't be regenerated and remove once and for all the unhelpful definition of additionality.

The message is clear that if this problem is not addressed now, it’s only going to get worse.

This is a critical moment. A new government gives the opportunity to focus clearly on an ageing, and increasingly diverse, population, coupled with a creaking NHS and social care system and insufficient housing. This has been decades in the making and is now a perfect storm. We do need a dedicated minister – or commissioner (opens new window) – for later living that has a seat in cabinet and acts as a link between departments to put people first.

How does this issue play into the wider debate about housing more generally?

The beauty of creating more affordable housing and more choice for older people is that it inevitably frees up the existing homes for the rest of the market, for young people and families to flourish without needing to necessarily build more and more.

As people live longer, and with their pensions and economic circumstances changing, many older people are more financially challenged as they enter their later years. For example, a lot of older people are in the private rental sector and have poor security of tenure. When their income drops, and they have health challenges, this creates major issues (opens new window). Older people in the private rental sector have been omitted from the debate to some extent. [Recent research (opens new window) has found that the proportion of people aged 65+ living in the private rental sector will rise from 4% in 2022 to 13.2% in 2040.]

We do need a conversation about the role of the family network and community. People will have specific and diverse needs, but there can’t be the expectation that family members will take in older relatives and care for them. There are some reasons for optimism, with diverse communities coming together to create new provision, such as Housing 21’s co-housing scheme in Birmingham (opens new window) supporting the Bengali community. In my role on the NHF I took the Taskforce to Agudas Israel and North London Muslim Housing Associations earlier this year, two very distinct faith-based housing organisations delivering some amazing outcomes for their communities.

The old assumptions that people from certain social minority groups look after their parents and grandparents at home and in the community is an oversimplification.  They can no longer be expected that extended families can take on the sole responsibility for their relatives, increasingly with dementia as they themselves grapple with the demands of contemporary modern life.

There are good things happening, but we need more of it, and more talk about it, because it’s becoming a daily issue for families, communities, and the country.

What we need is a funding system, a regulatory system, a grant system, and a care system that enables provision to come forward rather than stifling innovation.  Above all we need more players at the table.