Disabled People (Housing Needs)
The final item of business is a debate on motion S1M-659, in the name of Robert Brown, on the housing needs of disabled people. The debate will be concluded after 30 minutes without any question being put. Those members who want to speak in the debate should press their request-to-speak buttons as soon as possible.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament notes with concern the chronic shortfall of provision to meet the housing needs of disabled people and the lack of adequate information on the extent both of need and of provision; welcomes the forthcoming establishment by the Centre for Independent Living of the Disabled Persons Housing Service (DPHS) in Glasgow and Renfrewshire following the pioneering work of the DPHS in Edinburgh; and believes that the Scottish Executive, local authorities and voluntary groups should make the concept of independent living a reality for all disabled people, in particular by including a disabled audit in the proposed single seller survey, setting needs-related targets for the achievement of more barrier free housing, reviewing the building regulations to move to the standard of "stayability", encouraging fuller use for disabled people of housing with major disabled adaptations; supporting user-led DPHSs as equal partners in delivering these improvements and supporting adequate facilities and support for homeless disabled people.
I start by thanking the considerable number of members who have signed the motion and the various groups with which we have had contact and which have briefed us on the background to this issue.
The language of the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Executive is full of aspirations about inclusiveness, empowerment, fighting discrimination and building a new type of democracy. Most members subscribe to those aspirations and see our Parliament as an instrument of progress in that direction. There can be few areas where reality falls as far short of aspiration as it does in the provision made for disabled people, especially on the key issue of homes.
One of the privileges of being an MSP has been the opportunity to meet all sorts of different voluntary groups. I was struck, at an early stage of my career in this Parliament, by three groups. The first was the Advocacy Project near the Trongate in Glasgow, which empowers disabled people through the concept of advocacy, whereby other people speak up from their point of view.
The second was the Centre for Independent Living in Brook Street in Glasgow, which, as its name suggests, is about giving to disabled people—even many who have profound impairments—control of decision making in their lives. Two thirds of its staff are disabled, including five of its six senior people.
The third was, in its way, perhaps the most significant—the Disabled Person's Housing Service, which is just round the corner in Johnston Terrace in Edinburgh. I must say that I had not noticed it before I was elected to the Parliament and I did not know what it did. The Edinburgh DPHS, under its director Wlad Mejka, has been a pioneer in giving disabled people real, person-centred choices in housing. Its example is now being followed in Glasgow and Renfrewshire. I understand that eight more DPHSs are in the pipeline. Few innovations can have achieved so much for so little investment. Parliament must find ways of providing proper, long-term support to the DPHS network and of extending it across Scotland.
Sam Galbraith, when he was health minister, put it precisely:
"It is time to stop doing things to people and, instead, move to doing things with and for them."
That is what the DPHS is about.
Nobody knows the scale of the need. There are said to be 40,000 people who are wheelchair users, yet there are only 5,000 wheelchair-accessible houses in Scotland, which is a staggering discrepancy. Even worse, it is thought that only 2,000 of those 5,000 wheelchair-accessible houses are occupied by the people who need them.
I know from the Murray Foundation that there are about 7,000 amputees in Scotland—mostly elderly people with vascular problems. Almost a third of all Scottish households have at least one household member with a long-term illness or disability. That is a total of more than 600,000 households, according to the 1996 Scottish house condition survey. Disability is not an esoteric or minority situation in our society; it is a mainstream issue.
The lack of accurate information is extraordinary. The Equal Opportunities Committee has examined this matter. It heard evidence in February from the DPHS in Edinburgh. In his evidence, Wlad Mejka stated:
"This country seems to be willing to trace the journey of a cow from the field to the supermarket shelf, but it is unable to tell what happens to the £30 million or £35 million that is spent on adaptations across all local authorities in Scotland each year."—[Official Report, Equal Opportunities Committee, 29 February 2000; c 383.]
Across Scotland, most councils cannot tell how many houses have been adapted, how many wheelchair-accessible properties are held within their stock, which houses have been adapted and how they have been adapted. They cannot tell whether the houses are still occupied by people making use of the adaptations or whether the adaptations—usually funded from the public purse—have been removed later.
The first priority is to identify the houses in the public and private sectors that have been adapted using public resources and to track their use. It is a scandal if we cannot use this scarce resource effectively. The second priority is to put disabled people in control of the process, because it is the right thing to do and because they are much more likely to understand better what is required.
The DPHS is the link between those objectives. The Edinburgh project has already developed a database to match disabled people with housing. The Scottish Executive, to its credit, has provided a small budget for a pilot study to track grant-aided adaptations in the private sector. What are the grants used for? Are the adaptations kept by the successor to the property? Can disabled people access such houses when they are sold?
The DPHS in Glasgow, which is relatively new, has done some work on housing associations. The information is not yet complete, but it has identified only 251 housing association houses out of around 17,000—that is 1.4 per cent—that are fully wheelchair accessible. Of those houses, 367 are barrier free, 853 have some adaptations, and there are some sheltered houses with various sorts of facilities. However, a staggering 14,563 houses—83 per cent of the total—have no adaptations and are not accessible. If those figures are typical, there is a hell of a lot of work to do to provide houses that are accessible and suitable for disabled people. I will come back to that point.
I take Robert Brown's point about houses that have been converted for disabled people. In my years as a councillor, houses were adapted for disabled people but, when the people moved or died, the adaptations were pulled out. Would it not be possible for local authorities to keep a register of houses that had been adapted for disabled people? Putting in adaptations and then pulling them out is a waste of money, and houses that have been adapted can be taken out of local authority control.
In the past, there has been no such register available, but the DPHS is trying to tackle the problem and to get information that will match the houses and facilities with the people.
The single seller survey has a lot of potential. It could include a standard access audit that would allow disabled people to access options for home ownership effectively. The Minister for Communities has been looking to the market to develop products in this area, but without much success. It is time that we considered a statutory requirement. There ought also to be an energy efficiency audit, which would be important to people on low incomes.
The information landscape for disabled people is fairly barren. Little or no information on the accessibility of houses is available. It is worth mentioning the sheer trauma that a wheelchair user, or a disabled person generally, faces when going round looking for houses. There should surely be some sifting information available in the seller survey to help them.
I urge the minister, when he replies, to consider what support can be given for the establishment of a nationwide system of DPHSs; whether an assessment of the effectiveness of the existing spend could yield more resources to provide more suitably adapted housing; and to what extent Scottish Homes should be instructed to support investment in accessible housing for the disabled. Will more consideration be given to the single seller survey?
The lack of training for architects on housing for disabled people is a big problem. There needs to be a coming together of the views of disabled people on one side and the architects on the other.
The Centre for Independent Living in Glasgow developed from a somewhat different starting point from that of its colleagues in the Edinburgh project. Both organisations have a well-developed basic theme of empowering disabled people to have more control over life's choices. According to people at the Glasgow centre, an accessible house is the cornerstone of independent living. Most disabled people do not have such a house; their right to independent living is compromised. I hope that today's debate will help to put that right. How long can people wait? I commend the motion to the Scottish Parliament.
In order to accommodate all members who wish to speak, it would be helpful if members could limit their remarks to three minutes.
I begin by congratulating Robert Brown on obtaining this debate. He is a colleague of mine in the cross-party group on disability and I am very aware of his interest in this field. I, too, have a particular interest: as a community occupational therapist, I was formerly one of the professionals who were responsible for adapting properties for disabled people.
The vast majority of housing for disabled people, with which a number of problems have been identified, is provided by local authorities or housing associations. From my experience, when disabled people required some type of adaptation to be made to their property, many of them found themselves waiting on a list. It could take months for someone to assess their need for the work to be undertaken in the first place; when we had undertaken that assessment, we then had to go through the process of obtaining the finance to ensure that the work was carried out. Once the work had been carried out, it was necessary to keep the situation updated. Once a property has been adapted, one cannot just turn one's back on it. Often, the situation moves on, a person's condition progresses and further adaptations are required.
A situation that used to frustrate me, as someone who used to work within the system, was when a new tenant moved into a property that had been continually adapted and stripped out the adaptations. Level-access showers, which cost £1,500 to £2,000 to install, were removed and a bath was reinstalled. At the same time, there were people on our waiting list who were waiting for that very adaptation. As Robert Brown highlighted, we must ensure that the resources that we deploy in adapting houses for disabled people are used effectively. We must have a sensitive allocation policy, ensuring that local authorities track properties that have been adapted and that they try to match up those properties to individuals who have a disability. In my view, such steps could be undertaken readily, but they have been ignored for years.
When we consider the adaptation of properties for disabled people, it is important that we also consider safety issues. People may install a stairlift so that they can reach their bedroom or toilet upstairs but, if a fire breaks out in their property, the electrical circuit may go and they will be unable to escape. Central Scotland fire brigade has developed a domestic sprinkler system that could be installed, which would give additional protection to disabled people should a fire break out in their property. The device is very simple and would provide disabled people with additional reassurance.
I hope that ministers will consider not only adaptations of houses for disabled people but the safety issues. I also hope that they will consider ensuring that properties that are either built or adapted by local authorities or housing associations have such safety devices installed as a matter of course, in order to provide disabled people with additional security.
I welcome this debate. I hope that the minister will show today that the Executive is committed to an inclusive society and that housing for disabled people is a mainstream provision rather than something that we have to go round in circles to try to achieve through adaptations.
This is an important debate and Robert Brown is to be congratulated on bringing the matter before the Parliament.
A number of issues—social and economic—require to be addressed. For far too long there has been a tendency to ignore the housing needs and desires of disabled people. That has not been as a result of a lack of concern—far from it—but there has been a lack of understanding. We must appreciate the fact that disabled people wish to live in the community. Sometimes, even people with the most profound handicaps wish to live in the community. For social reasons, we should attempt to ensure that as many as are physically able to live in the community are allowed that opportunity.
Many of the beds that are blocked, unnecessarily, in the health service could be freed up if houses were adapted to enable people to return to their homes and live, with some form of support, in the community.
Does Bill Aitken agree that part of the problem is to do with attitudes? He uses language such as "allowed" and "opportunity"; perhaps we should be talking about rights. People with disabilities have the right to live in the community. That puts the responsibility on us and on the minister. We must break through that attitude problem.
It is a question of attitude. It is incumbent on those of us who are able bodied to ensure that as many people as possible who do not have our advantages are able to live in the community with the support of relatives, neighbours and everyone else. There is a tremendous fund of good will waiting to be tapped. The fact of the matter is that people are, by nature and inclination, sympathetic towards someone who is in that situation and I am confident that neighbours would be tremendously supportive. We should recognise that.
The question of adaptations has been dealt with. From my council experience, I can tell members that—Sandra White also identified this—councils simply do not have a sufficiency of adapted homes. Nor do they have a register. Some of the situations that arise from time to time are unbelievable. Houses that have been half-adapted after someone has thought to obtain an adaptation are, following a change of tenancy, altered again and the adaptation is ripped out. That is madness and surely cannot be allowed to continue.
There is much to be said for what has been put before us today. There is much to be said for following it up in a fairly determined manner. I look forward to the Deputy Minister for Local Government's comments in his winding-up speech. When the long-awaited housing bill, the arrival of which has been much postponed, eventually sees the light of day, it should contain provision for what Robert Brown has suggested. We would also like 5 per cent of new build in social housing to be adapted for the disabled. That in itself would be a step forward.
I congratulate Robert Brown. His motion and supporting speech covered a lot of the main points very well.
In my previous incarnation as an Edinburgh councillor I had dealings with the DPHS just around the corner and I was very impressed with it. It has injected a new attitude into disabled housing in Edinburgh and Lothian and is to be greatly congratulated.
The situation is extremely unsatisfactory, as other members have said. Partly, we have approached the matter from the wrong end, as all these matters are decided by planners, council housing officials and other worthies rather than by the people who are concerned. We should provide the houses that people want, which means involving them and asking them what they want of housing design and policy. We must work with the people, not for them.
We also need to fund organisations such as the DPHS properly. Frank McAveety listens to me quite often—in private or in public—on this issue. The funding of the voluntary sector is a disaster. We need to get a serious grip on it—and there must be some continuity. People in those organisations waste a huge amount of their time fund-raising instead of getting on with the job they are supposed to be doing. We must sort out the funding of the voluntary sector as a whole.
Robert Brown mentioned something that could be included as a discrete point in a bill: the single seller survey. It would not be unreasonable to legislate so that people who are selling a house have a survey of the disabled facilities that have been installed. That would take 10 minutes of a well-briefed person's time. The survey should appear with the particulars of the house and the advertisement could say that the house is suitable for a handicapped person. As Robert Brown said, that would make a great difference to people who are looking for houses. That point could be included in a bill, as it would not be unduly onerous.
Those of us who are lucky enough not to have disabilities should exert ourselves on behalf of those who do—not just make noises in favour of them. I look forward to the minister doing something. A lot of us will hound him until he does.
In the 1980s, I produced for ITV a series about people with disabilities. One sequence showed newly adapted housing. The people who dwelt there had not been restored to normal life by medication or any so-called miracle operation; they were living properly for the first time only because of their housing.
I pay tribute to the Margaret Blackwood Housing Association—then in Edinburgh, now throughout most of Scotland. Margaret Blackwood was a great and courageous pioneer. I was privileged to know her at the beginning of her campaign. She was in a wheelchair and told me that she often felt imprisoned in her tenement home in Edinburgh. It may have been a very nice tenement, but she was just as much a prisoner as some of the disabled I have met in Russia who live in the appalling Khrushchev flats. There, they are carried downstairs to feel the sun on their faces only once a year because the stairs are crumbling, there is often no stair lighting and, very often, their wheelchairs have only pram wheels. A person with a disability who lives in a tenement in Glasgow will say that that is what their life is like. They, too, get downstairs only once or twice a year when they find someone strong enough to carry them. That is utterly disgraceful.
We treat people with disabilities disgracefully in terms of funding. Some 37 per cent of the £275 million that is spent on learning disability services alone goes into hospital care. I would suggest that some of that money would be better spent on housing that could transform lives. People with learning disabilities are desperate to have what so many others have: a front door of their own and the dignity that comes with that.
I pay tribute to Robert Brown for initiating this debate and for referring to the excellent scheme in Lothian that aims to log in a database the accessible housing that is available. Lothian has investigated more than 55,000 public sector houses for access. It is moving on to deal with private sector housing.
In London, there is an empty homes initiative that scours the city to discover which houses are wasting away. There are tens of thousands of them in London. Often, a legal battle must be fought to trace owners and liberate the houses into the market and push through sales. We could do that with the many wasted dwellings to be found in Scotland. We could set up an empty homes initiative and pinpoint the homes that might be suitable for adaptation for the disabled.
No one can tell me that we do not have money to invest. This country can squander £850 million on that utterly fatuous dome at Greenwich. I see the minister smiling, but he should think about the money that has gone down the Thames. We have money. We should spend it more wisely.
I have to get a factual point across: there is an empty homes initiative in Scotland. It has been pioneered by the Executive and will continue over the next three years. It was one of the noble commitments in our programme for government, which I hope Dorothy-Grace Elder will read soon.
I will make some progress first—I can imagine what the intervention will be about.
I thank Robert Brown for bringing this matter to the chamber this evening. I want to put on record the role that Robert and his colleagues have played in trying to raise these matters through consultation and the discussions that they have with Executive ministers. I hope that the speeches that we have heard will influence what can be achieved in the period to come.
We all agree that there is in Scotland a shortage of housing that meets the needs of people with disabilities. It is a historic deficiency that has been ignored for far too long. We need to move much more quickly than we have in the past. It is important to recognise the progress that has been made to date, but there is much more that we can all do. I will sketch out some of the programmes that are in place and respond to some of the points that Robert Brown and others have raised.
We recognise the shortfall; we need to address it. Robert Brown clearly identified the scale of the problem. Twelve per cent of the housing stock has adaptations, but the overall need is probably much greater than that. We want to find ways to address that. Scottish Homes plays a key role in providing adaptations. This year, we expect Scottish Homes to spend around £2.5 million on 500 adaptation schemes to properties in Scotland. We are also working with Iain Gray, the Deputy Minister for Community Care, to see how community care can be better planned and delivered. That may address the issue raised by Bill Aitken about hospital stays and the availability of suitable housing for people to move into.
It is not just about the scale of the challenge, but about the willingness to work across departments, within local authorities and with other providers. I am sure that Michael Matheson can testify, on the basis of his professional experience, to the frustration that is felt.
I want to sketch from my experience one example of empowerment and addressing the needs of individuals. Robert Brown mentioned the Centre for Independent Living and transport provision for individuals with disabilities in the city of Glasgow. The best-value review recognised that the city should engage with consumers or customers first to discover what they require. Initially, there was scepticism. Users were critical of the bureaucracy; provision had perhaps not been effective. Over time, trust was developed, which resulted in much more acceptable transport provision, non-stigmatising in form and fashion, which was shaped to meet the needs of the individuals.
That is a small snapshot. Folk at different levels took it upon themselves to be responsible for that. If we do anything, we should encourage that more across Scotland. I have a fair number of doubts that that can be done solely through legislation. Dialogue and debate should be about encouraging such things.
In our programme for government, we made a key commitment on new-build housing in Scotland. Scottish Homes will spend £215 million on new and improved homes this year. Those new houses should be built to design standards that make them suitable for all, including people with disabilities. The vast majority of those new houses should be built to barrier-free standards. A number of major new developments have been designed to that standard.
That is a small snapshot of a much larger picture. Scottish Homes identifies design guidance for other mainstream providers of housing through the housing association movement. Many of the new developments that I have seen during my period of tenure as a minister have been about working through that over a period of time.
Will the minister take on board the need to make better use of adaptations that have already been made and paid for, which a number of members raised? I know that Administrations are not very good at making new commitments of extra money. This is a big opportunity to get things right without spending any more money.
There are two things. First, I accept Robert Brown's point. We need to involve disabled groups and individuals, who understand the process more than many of us, more—without patronising anyone in those circumstances. We need to engage them in the process at the beginning, so that the issues raised by Michael Matheson and others are part of developments.
Will the minister give way?
In a moment.
The second issue is the willingness to get clear commitments across local authority departments to deal with the confusion between social work and housing budgets. Anyone who has been a councillor will recognise the utter frustration of being faced with horrific cases that individual members sometimes have to deal with. It is about simple solutions rather than anything with large-scale resource implications. It is about drawing down resources more effectively. That can best be done if the overall agenda on best value and involving customers and individuals is dealt with much more effectively.
A third element to add to the two points I have mentioned—having given it greater thought—is the framework within which adaptations are made. In April, we brought into force amendments to the building regulations for new housing. They introduce a series of ways in which we can build more suitable housing for individuals. We want to continue and review that process. I welcome the views of voluntary agencies and local authorities on whether we can find further ideas on how building regulations can be used in that way.
I know we do not want to usurp local government's powers, but can we not ask councils, through the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities or by writing to them, to set up a register of houses that are already adapted? That would save money that is being wasted on removing adaptations and putting homes back into the letting pool. Is there something the Parliament and the Executive can do to encourage councils to keep houses for disabled people?
One of the commitments we have made with the DPHS is to put together a computerised database for private sector dwellings. That could be extended, but we need to see how it works. We need to work in partnership with local government on that. Central to what Wendy Alexander and I have been saying is working out ways to develop things more effectively at a local level. It is important that we address that issue, but I think it may be best addressed through the consultation process on the housing bill.
If there is to be a development role for local authorities in assessing need in their area, it is to be hoped that the underpinning consultation will influence the Executive's deliberations. That is why it is important for the Executive to support the organisations it is supporting—to get the experience and knowledge that means questions are raised where that is appropriate.
Robert Brown was very positive about the role played by voluntary organisations. I agree. We want the kind of work that they are doing to be undertaken more effectively, and to expand on that knowledge base. I do not think anyone here really knows the full picture. I want to emphasise that the Executive supports those organisations and will continue to do so.
The Deputy Presiding Officer is asking me to conclude. There are three very important points to mention. Wendy Alexander has announced that we will not legislate on sellers surveys until we see how successful the private sellers surveys are. The individual can already ask for a disability audit to be taken and one of the current providers of sellers surveys can offer that. Again, we welcome views and have a fairly open and flexible mind on it.
On the broader issue of the role played by local authorities, there is big agenda of housing change across Scotland. In Glasgow there is, I hope, the housing transfer development. It would be useful if that debate were influenced by the needs of disabled people so that some of the investment package that could be put together reflects such needs. I hope that organisations involved with these issues will make representations to Wendy Alexander, me and the new model housing associations, to propose that as a key area of future needs. The profile of much public sector housing need is increasingly elderly and will reflect greater needs in terms of disabilities.
In conclusion, I have sketched on behalf of the Executive a number of areas where we are moving forward. A great deal more needs to be done. I hope we can do that in partnership with parliamentarians, the independent organisations, local authorities and other housing providers. We want to fulfil the noble sentiments Robert Brown expressed on the initial purposes of the Parliament. I hope we can do that and reflect that thinking in legislation, in the housing bill and in other policy developments over the next few years.
Meeting closed at 17:39.