Up to 885,000 more people could be living in accessible housing if laws planned in England three years ago had gone ahead, according to new analysis.
Inside Housing reported that a government plan to “future proof” new homes was announced in 2022 but never went ahead.
The magazine for housing professionals said the government outlined a requirement for all new homes to have accessibility features, including entrance-level step-free access as a minimum.
It added that fresh analysis by the non-profit organisation Centre for Ageing Better and housing association Habinteg has found that just 23 per cent of homes built since then, or 112,000, meet government conditions to be accessible or adaptable.
Inside Housing calculated that 375,000 homes were not built to that standard and could have housed 885,000 people, according to the average number of people living in a home per the most recent census.
Millie Brown, deputy director for homes at the Centre for Ageing Better, told Inside Housing that raising minimum accessibility standards could have been “life-changing” for people if it had been brought in.
She said: “The proportions of older and disabled people among our population are growing significantly, and yet there are not enough provisions to support this change in our country’s demographics. We are falling abysmally short of meeting people’s needs.
“People living in homes which do not meet their accessibility needs cannot just wait for years and years, clinging to the hope this change might happen at some point in the future. Their need is desperate and urgent.”
Polling by the centre found that two-thirds of people expect they would have problems moving around their current home if they developed health issues or had a serious injury.
Christina McGill, director of social impact at Habinteg, said that accessible homes “hold huge potential to reduce health and social care costs”.
She added: “Homes are being built and plans are being made for new developments which will not be accessible and adaptable and will therefore fail to deliver these critical outcomes.”