Completed petition Petition to Improve the Provision of Disabled-friendly Housing in Wales’
We the undersigned call upon the National Assembly for Wales to urge the Welsh Government to take action to ensure that all new homes in Wales are built to fully meet all the Welsh Housing Quality Standards ensuring they are as comprehensive as Lifetime Home Standards, with at least 10 per cent of new homes built to full wheelchair accessibility standards.
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Wales’ hidden housing crisis: a lack of disabled friendly homes.
500,000 people across the UK become disabled every year.
That means homes need to be adaptable, so that in the future they can add grab rails and wet rooms, stairlifts or hoists. But many existing homes can’t be adapted at all, and even with newly built homes, most can’t be adapted cheaply. Critically, in Wales:
- 72% of people live in a home without an accessible front door: that means of the hundreds of thousands of people who get a mobility impairment every year, most will have to move house or risk being trapped in their own home;
- 54% of people in Wales do not have stairs big enough for a stair-lift to be fitted: meaning that if they become disabled, they will be trapped downstairs, washing at their kitchen sink, sleeping in their lounge, and unable to tuck their children into bed;
- 22% of disabled households are currently waiting for an adaptation to be made to their home.
Falls result in disabled and older people going to hospital. But they could be dramatically reduced by installing stair lifts, grab rails and level access to buildings, saving the NHS millions of pounds. The cost to the NHS of just one hip-fracture is estimated as £28,000. In comparison, it costs only £1,100 extra to build a new home to Lifetime Homes standard.
Disabled-friendly homes are, by design, cheaper and easier to adapt than other homes:
Installing a stair lift in a Lifetime Home can cost as little as £2,500, but if the wall by the stairs is not strong enough, the cost of replacing or reinforcing the wall could be five or ten times that.
If a bathroom is big enough for a wheelchair to fit into by design, the only cost to adapt the home may be around £300 to install grab bars. Whereas if the doorway needs to be widened and the wall needs to be strengthened, costs could easily be 30 times higher.
Signing this petition is the right thing to do economically, sustainably and ethically.
This petition was considered by the Petitions Committee
Find out about the Petitions Committee’s discussion of this petition