Housing our Ageing Population: Plan for Implementation (HAPPI2) Report (2012)

The All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Housing and Care for Older People, chaired by Lord Best, has highlighted the benefits of improved housing options for older people. Their 2012 inquiry report, written by Jeremy Porteus - Secretary to the APPG Inquiry and director of the Housing LIN - is the result of a five month inquiry into the progress in implementing the recommendations and design criteria set out in the landmark HAPPI report.

The APPG inquiry found there were far reaching benefits from developing good quality housing for older people, including a reduction in health and social care costs, as well as the freeing up of family housing and has made a series of recommendations to create movement in the housing market, improve the health of older people and create new housing options for younger people and families. These include:

• A Cabinet Office Task Force should bring together the Departments of Health and for Communities and Local Government to take forward the nationwide drive to build the homes needed by an ageing population
• The Department for Communities and Local Government should encourage and incentivise the private sector and registered social landlords to meet the rising demand of those seeking to move to elegant, functional, sustainable and manageable homes for later life
• The Department of Health should tailor its £300m Health, Care and Support Housing Fund to ensure more schemes are designed to HAPPI principles
• Private sector and registered social landlords, with government support, should develop a HAPPI kite mark to raise HAPPI's market profile
• Working alongside local authorities, the Homes and Communities Agency should lead in championing HAPPI to ensure that a clear targeted strategy for housing older people forms part of every local plan and that, where necessary, appropriate sites are brought forward specifically to fill any identified shortfall in market provision
• Planners should recognise the special nature of high-quality retirement housing in their requirements for affordable housing and for Community Infrastructure Levy charges
• Local housing and social care departments should give strategic priority to assessing and investing in older people's housing; and maintain accessible housing registers