Hansard

Our petition calls on the Scottish Government to make lifetime home standards the standard for ordinary builds and for 10 per cent of those builds to be wheelchair accessible. Lifetime homes are a straightforward concept—basically, they are homes that people should be able to live in for their entire lives. They are not the same as completely accessible homes but are homes that can be adapted quite simply at relatively low cost—usually about £1,100. At the time of building a home, the builder thinks about adaptations that might be necessary in the future. There is a misconception that there are disabled people and non-disabled people. Our view is that anybody could be disabled in the future and they might not want to move out of their home because they want a good quality of life. The principles of lifetime homes are fairly straightforward. They are about inclusivity, accessibility, adaptability, sustainability and good value. They have accessible doorways that people can fit a wheelchair through even if the people who are living in them are not wheelchair users at the time. That means that, if they become wheelchair users at some point in the future, it will not cost a huge amount of money to change the doorways to enable them to remain in their homes. Lifetime homes also have reinforced walls so that grab rails can be installed. Grab rails are very important for allowing people to stay in their homes if they acquire a disability, but many walls are too flimsy for them and a grab rail will come straight down. Putting in a reinforced wall at the beginning, at the point of building a home, is much cheaper than making the adaptation later, not least because that is the sort of thing that leads to people having to go into residential care when that is not their choice or having a longer stay in hospital when they would like to get back into their home. The other week, we had the announcement on health and social care integration from the Cabinet Secretary for Health, Wellbeing and Sport. The extra £200 million that she announced towards that was welcome, but we know that one of the major factors in integrating health and social care properly is the availability of accessible, adequate housing. We have heard stories about people having to live in the downstairs of their homes and wash in their kitchen sink, for example, because they do not have a bathroom that could be adapted for a wheelchair to fit into. Stephan Thomson will talk a little about his experience of that after I have finished. I will explain why we chose to petition on this particular issue. I know that you have our submission, but I will give you a brief overview of our research. We found that, in the UK, one in six people with disabilities and half of all children with disabilities live in homes that do not meet their needs. Almost three quarters of people with disabilities in Scotland report that they live in a home with an inaccessible front door. At the current very slow rate of increase, it would take 62 years for there to be enough wheelchair-accessible houses for the people in Scotland who need them. We just do not think that it is acceptable that anybody has to wash in their kitchen sink, is unable to get in and out of their house, is confined to it because the front door is inaccessible or has to go into residential care when that would not be their choice. There is nothing wrong with residential care when it is somebody’s choice, but 35 per cent of our residential service managers say that they have at least one person in their care home who would have chosen not to be there if they could have stayed in their own home. We think that that is completely unacceptable. That is the personal cost to the individual; there is also a knock-on effect for the public purse. A study that we did recently—you will not have seen it yet as it is new research that we have just completed, but I can send it to you—shows that in January alone Scottish general practitioners spent the equivalent of four and a half working months, which equates to 939 hours, dealing with disabled and older patients because of injuries and illnesses caused by living in inaccessible homes. If that is true of all GPs in Scotland, it amounts to 27.3 million hours every year. The £1,100 figure looks tiny in comparison. Stephan Thomson will talk about his experiences, and then we will be happy to take questions. You might want to ask about the lifetime home standard and what is covered by Scottish building regulations, because some things are covered. The Scottish Government is looking into amending those regulations, but we think that that could make homes less accessible in the longer term.