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Our final HLINks of 2025 covers sector-shaping insight on specialist housing and planning, our 2024–25 Year in Review, full HAPPI Hour recordings, key consultations and calls for views, powerful guest blogs, conference save-the-dates, and a warm thank you as we head into the festive break.

This week, we were pleased to mark HAPPI Awareness Week, celebrating care-ready, age-friendly housing and services. Launched by Housing LIN in 2020, the week highlights the HAPPI principles, first established 16 years ago by the Housing our Ageing Population Panel for Innovation and chaired by Lord Best, which continue to shape adaptable, attractive and sustainable homes for later life.

In this new Housing LIN guest blog, Abbey Oakley, Head of Later Living and Supported Housing at Orbit, comments on the importance of including this vital housing provision in future development strategies.

At Socrates – the NIHR Social Care Rapid Evaluation Team – they are updating their list of priority areas for rapid evaluation. They would value your advice, so that their funder can have an up to date picture of important areas of practice to focus on in the next two years. 

In this Housing LIN Viewpoint (no. 115), Ifti Maniar, Director of Planning at WWA, argues that outdated and inconsistently applied C2/C3 planning rules are hindering the delivery of specialist housing for England and Wales’ ageing population.

The government launched a consultation on the National Planning Policy Framework, proposing reforms across 12 policy objectives, including support for rural affordable housing and clearer accessible housing standards for older and disabled people. Submissions are due by 10 March 2026.

In this new Housing LIN guest blog, Fiona McLeod, a former Health Visitor and Change Agent at the Department of Health, reflects on her decision to move into sheltered accommodation after years of careful thought.

In this week’s HLINks, we share the latest housing, health and care news, celebrate HAPPI Awareness Week with blogs and events, highlight reports and Housing LIN’s Year in Review, and preview our final newsletter before the Christmas break.

HAPPI Awareness Week is a week-long observance of care-ready accommodation and age-friendly house services. This year, HAPPI Awareness Week takes place from Monday, 15 December. Throughout the week, we will share a selection of daily news items, guest blogs, events and announcements celebrating different aspects of the 'care ready' HAPPI design principles.

In this new Housing LIN blog, Stephen Witherford, co-founder of Witherford Watson Mann architects, explores how Britain’s housing crisis is not just about numbers, but about rebuilding community.