Comment

New Planning Practice Guidance for older people: does it go far enough?

It is well established that we have an ageing population. On 26 June 2019 the Planning Practice Guidance (PPG) was updated with several key amendments relating to the ageing population and providing housing for older and disabled people. The updated PPG explains that “The need to provide housing for older people is critical.”

However the planning system, particularly planning policies, have consistently failed to set out a positive basis for the housing and care needs of this group to be provided.  To compound this further, there has long been debate over whether certain forms of housing/accommodation in this sector should be classed as C2 (residential institutions) or C3 (dwelling houses) with consequential implications for how they are treated under affordable housing policies and through the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL).

This matter has been the subject of increasing exposure in recent times, including through the House of Lords Select Committee Report on ‘Tackling Intergenerational Unfairness’ (April 2019) which recommended that “The Government should ensure that local plans have specific policies to address the needs of younger and older people.”

The House of Lords Select Committee Report also acknowledged the long running debate over the use class of Extra Care Housing and recommended that “The Government should issue guidance clarifying that extra care retirement communities fall within the C2 use class as they are capable of delivering high levels of care to older people and so should be treated as the same planning use class as care homes.”

Plan-making

The manner in which Local Plan policies have provided for housing to meet the needs of this sector have varied significantly. In many cases, Local Plans contain no relevant policy and in others there may be a generally permissive policy, although in both of these cases, the extent to which they support delivery is highly questionable.  Alternatively, policies might require a proportion of development to be wheelchair accessible, for example, but that hardly acknowledges the diverse needs that this group in the community have. Only in a very small number of cases have Local Plans allocated sites for its delivery or included a policy which sets out the quantum of such housing or other forms of accommodation that might be required.

The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) has always required the housing needs of older people, and other groups, to be assessed and reflected in planning policies. However, there has been a lack of real clarity as to how this should be done. In its original guise, back in 2014, the PPG offered a single bullet point on how the housing needs of older people should be addressed. While last year’s revisions to the PPG expanded this to three paragraphs, it remained light on specifics with surprisingly little on practice.

From that perspective, its spin-off into a separate section of the PPG has provided a welcome opportunity to clarify and expand the guidance. It retains much of what has gone before, but more clearly frames its guidance around key question that should help all parties.

The revised guidance largely retains an overview of why it is important to plan for the housing needs of older people, but makes clear that authorities should have an understanding of how the ageing population affects housing needs “from the early stages of plan-making”. It still directs plan-makers towards Census data and demographic projections, and continues to endorse the use of industry toolkits with a leading provider now name checked. This is consistent with existing best practice and should strengthen the authority of these approaches, although we note that significant concerns still exist over the use of some of those toolkits.

There is, however, recognition of the need to draw upon ‘multiple sources of information’, particularly when considering the needs of elderly people with disabilities. The continued lack of a ‘silver bullet’ to tie everything together within the standard method figure may disappoint some, but is not unsurprising given the diverse and specific needs of older people. It should not hinder plan-makers’ attempts to positively meet the housing needs of this group.

They are now required to “set clear policies to address” the housing needs of older people, which ‘can’ set out how proposals will be considered and “could also provide indicative figures or a range for the number of units of specialist housing for older people needed across the plan area throughout the plan period”. While this could be interpreted as optional, plans should be more engaged with this issue when the new guidance is taken in the round.

A later section, for example, is unequivocal that “plans need to provide for specialist housing for older people where a need exists”, and leaves the door firmly ajar for “innovative and diverse” models where appropriate. It gives plan-makers discretion over “whether to allocate sites for specialist housing for older people”, but makes clear that this “can be appropriate” where an unmet need exists to “provide greater certainty for developers and encourage the provision of sites in suitable locations”. This may persuade plan-makers of the benefits of allocating sites for older persons housing, albeit this remains comparatively rare at present with a greater focus on the determination of individual applications. With an increase in developers/operators in this sector perhaps the pressure to allocate sites (potentially for C2 or C3 uses) will increase.

Decision-taking

The PPG now requires that local planning authorities take a positive approach to schemes which would help address an identified unmet need for specialist housing. That is encouraging but the key factor will be the extent to which local authorities manage to balance the competing (and possibly conflicting) policies within Local Plans to ensure that this positivity is reflected in decision making and therefore delivery.

The issue of whether certain forms of specialist housing is a C2 or C3 use has long required some clarification. Many decision makers have taken a narrow view that schemes which include “self-contained” accommodation must be C3, regardless of their setting, the extensive facilities that the schemes provide or the manner in which the care needs of residents are catered for. The updates to the PPG do not go quite as far as the House of Lords Select Committee recommended, but they do explain that when considering which Use Class a scheme falls in to, consideration “could, for example, be given to the level of care and scale of communal facilities provided.” 

The updates to the PPG also provide clarification on the form that certain types of housing in this sector could take. For example, extra care housing or housing-with-care is defined as being a form which “usually consists of purpose-built or adapted flats or bungalows”. The reference to bungalows would suggest that the authors of the PPG accept that ‘extra care’ accommodation could be self-contained.

When considering whether a scheme is C2 or C3, there is clearly scope for the debate through planning applications and appeals to shift from whether accommodation is self-contained to whether the extent of care and communal facilities provided is sufficiently high.

The PPG acknowledges that there are a wide range of forms of housing designed to meet the needs of older people. This is a far cry from the earlier versions of the PPG which referred to a narrow range of products including care homes and bungalows. This changing shift in the PPG reflects the changing market and the growth of extra care, retirement village and continuing care retirement communities.

Overall, the changes regarding the definition of certain forms of accommodation should provide a degree of clarity to developers, local planning authorities and other decision-makers and we hope that this is reflected in positive approaches through the determination of applications. Furthermore, it is also hoped that this clarification will assist when setting Community Infrastructure Levy charging schedules.

Remaining concerns

Notwithstanding the generally positive nature of these amendments, there are some areas where we retain concerns. For example, authorities have been able to count specialist housing schemes (including C2 accommodation) towards their housing requirements and five year supply. 

This has led to the misconception from some officers and members that having a five year supply or planning for housing need are sufficient to meet the needs of the area. These comments fail to regard the fact that the various housing types designed for older people fulfil a diverse range of needs which are not catered for in general housing.

In addition, and although the PPG does acknowledge what elements can swing the balance towards C2 or indeed C3, it still defers to the LPA to make the final judgement on this. On that basis, we question whether the amendments to the PPG go far enough in terms of classifying later living products. Amending the PPG provided the opportunity to ensure greater clarity on this matter. 

It will be particularly interesting to see how the amended PPG is applied in London where the Mayor has sought to define certain forms of accommodation as C3 irrespective of the scale of care provision and communal facilities.

There is an increasing trend towards the application of affordable housing policies to Extra Care and care home (C2) developments and a continuing lack of clarity when the viability of schemes is considered through CIL. As a consequence, this is becoming a financially challenging issue for developers and operators in delivering commercially viable schemes (and therefore restricting the supply to meet need). The amendments to the PPG could have provided the opportunity to provide further, and much needed, clarification to ensure that schemes are capable of being planned for and delivered viably.

Summary

It is encouraging that the Government’s PPG acknowledges the ageing population and that providing for the housing needs of older people is critical. It is also encouraging that the PPG has been updated in response to recommendations and now requires local planning authorities to set clear policies to address the housing needs of older people. This should help ensure that future Local Plans do include such policies, and hopefully provide an indication of the quantum of housing that is required to address the needs of this group. To date Local Plans have been severely lacking in this regard.

We welcome the recognition that a variety of housing forms are required to meet the needs of older people. This responds to both the market and also to the diverse range of needs in this group. If local planning authorities are to plan to meet the needs of older people (including those approaching retirement) then that covers both a wide age spectrum and a broad range of care needs, from those who wish to live independently to those with high care needs.

Clarification on Use Classes is positive and should assist all parties when considering the application of policies and setting CIL charging schedules. Although the amendments do not provide absolute clarity regarding the C2/C3 debate, they do go some way to breaking down the preconceptions regarding extra care and other forms of specialist housing.

Overall these changes are steps in the right direction. The test will be the extent to which authorities pick up on these changes when preparing Local Plans and, when they do not include policies to meet need, the extent to which this is addressed by inspectors. In the decision-making stage, we look forward to seeing how local authorities engage with the expectation that they should take a positive approach to schemes which would help meet unmet needs.

For further information on housing for older people please contact David Murray-Cox, Andrew Lowe, Catriona Fraser or Matthew Spilsbury.

3 July 2017