New towns must be designed with young and old in mind

Seven locations have recently been proposed by the government as sites for new towns. These could contribute between 70,000 and 280,000 new homes towards their manifesto commitment of 1.5 million housebuilding target.

But with a growing ageing population, these towns must be constructed along age-friendly guidelines if they are to be fit for the future, writes Charlotte Lewis of the Centre for Ageing Better.

New Towns are one of the ways the UK government hopes to meet one of its major manifesto policies; the building of 1.5 million new homes over the parliament.

Naturally the success of any government is measured on their ability to meet their manifesto pledges. But the government must not become so focussed on the scale of the challenge they have set that they lose sight of the wider purpose.

While we need to build more homes in this country, what is also lacking from our current housing stock are sufficient homes for people to age well in. This means having enough homes that are adaptable, accessible, energy efficient and close to communities and services.

There is currently a huge disparity between the kind of homes that exist and the kind of homes people need. Twelve million people have accessibility needs and yet live in homes that lack even the most basic of accessibility features such as step-free access to main areas of the home, wide doorways and an entrance-level toilet.  

The homes being built in this parliament need to meet the housing need of now, and the housing need of decades in the future. 
Our population is older than it has ever been. Since the 1980s, the number of people aged 65 and above in England has increased by more than 50%. We need new homes built to accessibility standards to support people today.

But the need for accessible homes and communities will only get more important in 20, 30 and 40 years’ time. By 2065, it is projected one in four people will be 65 and over, and almost half of the population will be 50 and over. 

We are going to need to accelerate the rate that we’re building new accessible homes to meet the growing demand over the coming decades. In the creation of new towns, it will be important to consider how the needs of the young, working families that might be drawn there initially, could change over time if they decide to make the new town their forever home. 
New towns in the past were seen as a success by many in the way they removed people from post-war slums and boosted the economy. 

However, there were also problems in how their layout created car dependency, and the ‘zoned’ or planned nature of some developments which led to heightened social isolation. Some shopping centres were seen as inaccessible to the majority of residents. With well thought-out design and implementation, history’s verdict on this generation of new towns could be more universally positive. 

As our ageing population grows through this century, it is even more important that homes and communities are built with age-friendly principles in mind. The creation of new towns are a blank slate and provide planners and developers with a unique opportunity to consider how to ensure our homes and communities work together to create places where we can age well and live good later lives.

At the Centre for Ageing Better, we are proud to manage the UK Network of Age-friendly Communities, which are committed to creating the environments that we can all age well in. 

An age-friendly new town should consider how the built and the social environment helps people to age well. Can people access transport to get where they need to go or if driving is the only viable option? Are towns built in a way to enable people to socialise, whether that’s through creating places where you could bump into neighbours, or building community centres where activities and events can be held?

Our new Age-friendly Built Environment Quick Guides outline all the ways that green spaces, public buildings, public seating and more can be designed and modified to create an accessible and welcoming public realm. Unfortunately, these principles are often overlooked when new developments are being built. 

As the Transport for New Homes campaign, among others, has pointed out, new housing estates are often not in proximity to other estates or existing towns, which makes bus route planning difficult, adding to journey times and making routes unappealing.

Such ill-thought-out developments have been dubbed cowpat developments for the way they resemble isolated, splat-like clusters of homes dropped onto greenfield sites. 

If the new towns are developed in this way, where housing volume is prioritised over community living, there is a significant risk they will become places where it is challenging for some older people to live their day-to-day lives. Whether that’s carrying out their shopping, meeting neighbours or accessing GP surgeries, hospitals, and dentists. 

The government has shown it has the right expectations for what it wants from new developments.

Their election manifesto stated that Labour wants exemplary development to be the norm, not the exception, and steps will be taken to ensure more high-quality, well-designed, and sustainable homes are built.

The government’s updated national design guidance sets out clear recommendations that any new developments should be well-connected to local shops and services, with an emphasis on every stage of life, including older age. 

It would be a significant failing of the government's home building legacy if new towns are created which are not practical and liveable for huge swathes of the population, now and in the future. In 1918, after the end of the First World War, the then prime minister, David Lloyd George promised ‘homes fit for heroes’ and decent social housing. 

Following the Second World War, there was another push to build for the future, which led to the dawn of the new towns. 
How closely those ambitions were met are for historians to debate. What is clear is that we are at another pivotal moment in the country’s housebuilding and community building. 

Given this blank slate opportunity that new towns represent, the government should be building them to age-friendly principles to future proof them for a growing ageing population and as an exemplar of what is possible. 

This article first appeared in LocalGov online on 7 May