Agenda item

(Director of Communities) to consider the attached report.

The Director of Communities, Mr A Hall introduced the report on the proposed rationalisation of the Council’s sheltered housing assets. He explained that the Council had a number of sheltered and grouped housing schemes to accommodate older people.  In both cases, residents currently received a daily well-being check from their Scheme Manager, usually through a home visit, and were also monitored by the Council’s Careline Service 24 hours a day.

Over many years, sheltered housing had provided a safe and enjoyable environment for older people to live independently together, until their care and support needs were such that they needed to move into more intense extra-care accommodation (now often referred to as independent living) or residential/nursing accommodation.

However, in recent years, there had been a sharp decline in the popularity of sheltered housing (which was reflected across the country), with older people tending to prefer to remain in their own homes for much longer, until they needed to move directly into independent living, residential or nursing accommodation.  This had resulted in many vacancies in sheltered housing becoming difficult-to-let, particularly bedsits and some first floor flats, resulting in allocations being made to applicants registered on the Council’s Supplementary Housing Waiting List (comprising applicants who are ineligible for the main Housing Register), particularly older people currently living outside the District.

At the same time, the Council had increasing numbers of local people registered on its Housing Register in need of general needs housing who were having to wait long periods of time to be accommodated, usually years, and in the meantime living in deficient existing accommodation. Furthermore, demand for temporary accommodation for homeless households had increased too.

Officers believed that the number of low demand sheltered properties now needed to be reduced through decanting the existing residents at some sheltered housing schemes to other suitable accommodation and then developing the resultant vacant land or buildings to provide accommodation to help meet the housing needs of local people registered on the Housing Register, or homeless households, through the Council’s Housebuilding Programme.

Committee members were asked to consider and give their comments on this proposal, but keeping in mind that there was still a need for sheltered housing and that it would still be retained into the foreseeable future. The Committee was asked to report their views to the next Cabinet meeting.

Mr Hall was asked which schemes were likely to be chosen; he indicated that officers had not got as far as identifying any specific schemes as yet.

The Committee considered the first recommendation, making the following points:

·         It was considered understandable that people did not want to go into sheltered accommodation  nowadays as they could stay at home for far longer than they used to;

·         Essex had an ‘extra care’ complex in Brentwood which was nicer and catered for independent living;

·         EFDC had Jessopp Court where residents initially received on-site care by Essex CC. However, Essex CC did not continue with the on-site support and it had to be turned into sheltered accommodation;

·         EFDC sheltered houses were not ‘extra care’ schemes as ECC would not support us for this;

·         There was an officer group looking into the future provision of the Scheme Management Service provided to older people;

·         Asked what the demographic of the current tenants were, Mr Hall said that it now tended to be of a younger age group.

AGREED: Recommendation 1 was agreed.

The Committee next considered the other three recommendations. They questioned if the alarms that were attached to the Fire Doors were set to trigger all the other alarms. They were told that the door alarms did not trigger the other alarms off if someone just used it as an exit. The other alarms were connected to fire/smoke detectors.

AGREED: Recommendations 2, 3 & 4.

RESOLVED:

1)    That further consideration should be given to reducing the amount of low-demand sheltered housing in the Council’s ownership and developing the resultant vacant land or buildings to provide either general needs housing, temporary homelessness accommodation and/or more appropriate accommodation for older people in order to help meet the housing needs of local people registered on the Housing Register in the future;

2)    That the “Sheltered Housing Standard”, be adopted - with an objective of all sheltered housing schemes retained in the long term meeting the Standard over a reasonable period of time;

3)    That a further report be brought to a future meeting of the Communities Select Committee with:

(a)   Recommendations about which sheltered housing schemes should be

decommissioned over a period of time and their site(s) redeveloped;

(b)   An initial proposed approach to decanting the existing residents;

(c)   A Communication Strategy for the Project;

(d)   Initial redevelopment proposals for each of the identified sites;

(e)   Indicative budget costs; and

(f)   An Equalities Analysis; and

4)    That the assessment of sheltered housing schemes considered most suitable for redevelopment has regard to the following criteria:

(a)   The number of bedsits;

(b)   The lettability, demand and location of the scheme;

(c)   The long term costs of improvements/repairs;

(d)   The amount of sheltered housing within the locality;   

(e)   The number of lettings to local residents compared to applicants on the

       Supplementary Waiting List; and           

(f)   The demand for general needs housing in the locality.