New Centre for Ageing Better analysis reveals how few homes in the UK are fully accessible, and the huge regional variations with some residents’ chances of finding an accessible home six times lower than others.
The new release shows how the gap between the number of accessible homes and the number of Disabled people has increased substantially, potentially leaving almost 13 million people to live in homes that don’t meet their needs.
- Older people living in the North East or the East Midlands are six times less likely to be living in a fully accessible home* compared to people living in London, new analysis from the Centre for Ageing Better reveals.
- Only one in 25 homes (4%) headed by someone aged between 55 and 64 in the North East or the East Midlands have all four accessibility features compared to almost one in four (23%) in the capital.
- Only one in eight (13%) homes in England have all four accessibility features that mean they can be visited by someone with access needs, with substantial variation across different regions.
The Centre for Ageing Better is warning in a new briefing on accessible homes that progress on some accessibility features has been “frozen in time” with little progress made over more than a decade.
And while the proportion of homes with certain accessibility features has flatlined, demand is growing with rising numbers of Disabled people, declining healthy life expectancy and a growing ageing population.
The difference between the number of Disabled people in England and the number of fully accessible homes has grown by more than 2 million in just over a decade.
In 2009, there were 11.4 million Disabled people in England and just 900,000 fully accessible homes – leaving an accessibility gap between demand and supply of 10.5 million.
In 2022, the latest date for which figures are available, the number of Disabled people had increased to 16.1 million. And while the number of fully accessible homes had also increased – to 3.3 million – the accessibility gap has grown to 12.8 million – 2.3 million higher than in 2009.
The North West has the highest accessibility gap with 1.63 million more Disabled people than fully accessible homes, closely followed by the West Midlands and Yorkshire and Humberside with 1.3 million.
The Centre for Ageing Better is calling on the government to use the Planning and Infrastructure Bill as a golden moment to stimulate the construction of more accessible homes to meet current and future need.
The bill is currently working its way through Parliament and is now awaiting its second reading in the House of Lords.