Right Homes, Right Support: Surrey County Council’s approach to delivering specialist housing for adults with care and support needs

Over the past five years Surrey County Council has been embarking on a large-scale transformation programme to deliver specialist accommodation to residents with care and support needs. Through our Right Homes, Right Support Strategy we have an ambition to:

• Increase the availability of affordable Extra Care Housing by 725 units
• reduce the percentage of working age adults with learning disabilities or autistic people in residential care by 40+% by expanding the availability of Supported Independent Living
• increase the number of Supported Independent Living units for people with mental health needs by at least 185.

We recognised that to successfully deliver this ambition of close to 1,400 units we had to work in partnership with the market.

Five years on, we are making good progress towards our target. There have been early wins that we implemented at pace and longer-term endeavours that require ongoing collaboration with our strategic partners through design, planning and development.

Included in the quick wins was working with residential homes to transform their model of care to Supported Independent Living. This created over 100 extra units of specialist housing and meant individuals had the opportunity to live more independent lives.

Our commissioning team also worked with the market to encourage Supported Independent Living growth within the independent sector.

To date we have reduced the number of autistic people and people with learning disabilities in residential care by 34%.

We are pleased to share that our first affordable Extra Care Housing development is currently taking shape with CField Construction and once completed this will be operated by our development and housing management partner, Places for People. There are a further seven sites in the pipeline.

Over the coming weeks, our first residents will move into their new purpose built Supported Independent Living accommodation across Surrey (opens new window), which we have directly delivered in partnership with Neilcott Construction Ltd and architects, AtkinsRéalis.

This goes to show when we work with the market and employ a mixed approach to delivery, we can make things happen, deliver for our residents and ensure no one is left behind.

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This Housing LIN guest blog was published ahead of the Housing LIN HAPPI Hour webinar Driving housing delivery through market engagement, in which Simon is a guest speaker. The session explores how effective market engagement can accelerate housing delivery and shape developments that truly meet community needs. Read the blog to learn more about Surrey’s partnership approach — and register your place or watch the recording here.