Our report The Mayhew Review: Future Proofing Retirement Living – Easing the care and housing crises, published today and supported by ARCO, finds that the Government must build 50,000 new homes for older people each year to tackle the UK’s housing and social care crisis.

Professor Les Mayhew’s research shows that with the number of over-65s set to race past 17 million by 2040, the Government should initiate an accelerated programme of constructing older people’s housing with up to 50,000 new units a year, on top of the meagre 7,000 currently built annually. This means that one in four of new homes should be targeted at older people.

Achieving this growth would help older people stay healthy for longer and reduce the burden on the NHS and care homes. Each new home would free up housing and surplus bedrooms for younger families and first-time buyers, making housing more affordable. And new developments could play a major part in revitalising declining high streets.

The ability of older people’s housing to foster social connection is especially important given that as many as 6.2 million older people are set to live alone by 2040 – half of them aged 80 and over – exacerbating the loneliness epidemic and stretching social services to breaking point.

Professor Les Mayhew, whose commission this year drew on evidence and input from over forty experts, highlights the concrete steps the Government needs to take to reach the levels of older people’s housing required:

• Launching the Older People’s Housing Taskforce immediately
• Reforming planning rules to make it easier to build housing suitable for later life
• Putting older people’s housing on a level playing field with all other developments
• Cutting Stamp Duty so it is the same for last-time buyers as first-time buyers
• Ramping up the financial advice available for older people looking to move

The Government committed to expanding housing-with-care for older people in a string of white papers at the end of 2021 and start of 2022, including on levelling up and social care, but is yet to act upon these commitments.