Charity calls for Government to build more homes for disabled people

As the housing crisis continues despite an upturn in the number of new homes being built (annual housing starts totalled 137,780 in the 12 months to June 2014, up by 22 per cent compared with the year before) the charity Leonard Cheshire Disability warns of disabled people losing out because of the sheer lack of suitable housing.

It has been estimated that as many as 11 per cent of British adults have mobility problems. A report published by Leonard Cheshire Disability furthermore points out that of these people, nearly threequarters of them say that the door to their property is inaccessible and more than half do not have a bathroom large enough to fit a wheelchair into or have stairs big enough for a stair lift to be fitted.

Commenting on the latest house-building statistics released by the Department for Communities and Local Government, campaign director Jane Harris said: “This is a welcome increase in the number of new homes in England, but disabled people will still be left behind without action to tackle their housing crisis.

“Too many disabled people are washing at kitchen sinks and being shut out of their bedrooms as there is a major shortage of disabled-friendly homes. We need Government to look not only at how many houses are built, but at whether they are disabled-friendly, whether they are adaptable, whether someone who uses a wheelchair could live in them.

“Disabled people will be living in Victorian conditions for years to come, if we don't start building the right kind of homes for all of our futures.”