Sheltered housing review (Portsmouth City Council)

Housing Advisers Programme case study

2021/22 cohort 

Portsmouth City Council is proud of our Sheltered Housing Service and the positive impact it has had on the lives of our sheltered residents. At the same time, we are conscious of the need to develop our buildings and services aligned to the changing needs of this client group.

We needed to understand the quality of our sheltered housing and how we should approach these assets in our asset management strategy. The project aims were to understand what good sheltered housing would look like and to inform our design standards moving forward.

Work centred around three streams: schemes, assets and people. Ensuring that the voice of our residents were central to the design of the project.

The review has allowed us to understand the quality of our sheltered housing provision, and to appreciate the benefits of the service from the perspective of our residents. These findings will allow us to compare our accommodation with the expectations of safe, secure and suitable housing which is a key theme in the city's Joint Health & Wellbeing Strategy.

Our consultation with residents has provided an appreciation that building configuration is not the only components to resident satisfaction, staffing and support provision have been key indicators of satisfaction.

Sheltered housing is a vital service that prevents loneliness, dependence, and social exclusion. Most of the PCC sheltered services are well used, provide strategically relevant support and are working hard to support vulnerable residents in challenging economic times.  

In line with national trends, our population is ageing, diversifying, and growing in complexity; more people with learning disabilities and mental health needs will require supported housing as older people than ever before and other older people will live longer but with more complex health needs.   

To support our changing population, we need to bring innovation into our older people’s sheltered housing model, to build in additional capacity for people with different needs but also to identify opportunities to develop more specialist provision.  

We need to offer support to enable older people to remain independent for as long as possible and work in partnership with local services to prevent and intervene in housing issues as soon as possible.  

Our stock of 22 blocks which offer over 500 sheltered homes were constructed between 40 and 60 years ago. These homes require review to understand if they meet the standards of accommodation we need moving forward, this knowledge can then inform our capital spending and asset management strategy.

For the first time since the 1980s we are planning to build sheltered housing. We need to understand the principles and design standards which we should look to achieve with this accommodation.

We created a team and appointed a manager to evaluate the work needed and to visit schemes to design the parameters of the project.

An evaluation of available research was undertaken by the project manager focusing on health determinates, ageing well, population and demographic projections.

The project manager reviewed the Housing Register to understand the age and reported needs of those on our register. He also met with our sheltered housing manager to understand the cohort living within our existing schemes and what had brought them to move into sheltered housing.

The project manager then visited all 22 schemes interviewing staff and residents to understand their views on the existing schemes.

The project team met with colleagues from Building Services to understand what was known about our existing stock and what works are planned for these assets.

The project manager met with the development team to understand our current design principles and what developments are planned.

Following the initial analysis, the project team assessed the initial findings and established that there were three main streams to the project: Schemes, Assets and People. Detailed below are the streams, tasks allocated to each work stream, resources needed to complete work and a progress report.

Schemes

Internal staff resources needed:

• sheltered housing manager and team
• building surveyors
• the project manager
• an administrator

LGA HAP funding used to procure architects to write the building evaluation criterion.

Work stream tasks and progress to date:

• Project manager to visit every scheme, meet staff and residents and conduct a visual evaluation of each scheme and how it worked. Progress - Complete
• Project Manager to use resident interactions from visits to design the consultation framework and process. Progress - Complete
• A building evaluation criterion to be created which would compare existing schemes to modern standards needed for good accommodation for older people. For common parts and shared spaces: accessibility, positive use of circulation space, shared spaces, private spaces, staff areas, and external environment. For homes: accessibility and adaptability, space standards and layout, homeliness, suitability for different needs, environment including heating and lighting. Progress - complete
• Building surveyors to survey each scheme and to compare the scheme to the evaluation criteria. Progress - half of all schemes have been surveyed with three of the 22 schemes being evaluated
• The completed evaluations to feed into the asset management strategy and capital spending plan. Progress - not yet started

Assets

Internal staff resources:

• development team
• Building Services teams
• building surveyors
• the project manager
• sheltered housing manager and team
• an administrator.

LGA HAP funding used to procure architects to write the design principles for new sheltered and supported housing.

Work stream tasks and progress to date:

• Building surveyor to meet with sheltered housing team, AD for HN&S and to understand what is needed from consultants. Progress - complete
• Building surveyor to create client brief for the procurement of consultants. To agree this brief with the project team. To procure the relevant consultants. Progress - complete
• Provide design standards which for new build sheltered housing ensuring that these refer to HAPPI principles and any other principles or design standards which may be relevant. Provide report on new build standards and present these to the project team. Progress - complete
• Share design principles back to the consultation group, sheltered housing team and resident engagement group. Create feedback document for those who took part in the consultation process. Progress - to be actioned in new municipal cycle
• Present design standards to the design review panel and take through democratic process for information. Progress - to be actioned in new municipal cycle

People

Internal staff resources:

• sheltered housing manager and team
• resident engagement team
• the project manager
• an administrator.

Work stream tasks and progress to date:

• Project Manager to use resident interactions from visits to design the consultation framework and process. Progress - complete
• Consultation draft and consultation groups to be agreed by project team. It was decided that those who are over 55 on our housing register and those living in schemes would be consulted. Progress - complete
• Officer to carry out consultation and collate information, presenting back to the project team. Progress - complete, around 140 responses to the consultation were noted from both residents and those on the housing register.

We are at the start of our work to review our existing portfolio of sheltered housing and have not yet projected into the future what need the city will have for this service moving forward.

The work to review our sheltered housing assets against design principles that support older people to live well has now been planned into our workstreams for the forthcoming years and this will provide us with the capacity to plan our capital expenditure for these assets.

One outcome of our work to date is that our residents and staff have told us that they felt valued through this process and were happy to have provided their views on our services. Many also agreed to stay engaged in the work as we continue with the project.

Project outputs have included the design principles document, an evaluation basis for our existing stock, a work plan to review our existing assets and a register of consultation feedback we can use to support our project moving forward.

The design principles created will be used for future developments of sheltered housing.

Our surveyor teams will continue to survey our existing stock and review each scheme against our evaluation guidelines to understand and inform our capital investment. This work will continue to inform our asset management strategy.

Our sheltered housing team will continue to refer to the consultation outcomes as they move forward with the review and development of their service.

What went well

Resident engagement has been key to this project, and we had excellent engagement from both staff and residents. The consultation has shown us that indicators of satisfaction which we consider key, may not be what's most important to our residents.

Our stock was designed and built when standards of accommodation for older people were very different. We now need to evaluate our stock against the definitions set within the city's Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy which looks for us to provide safe, secure and suitable housing. This project has provided officers with a framework for this evaluation.

Much research has been undertaken to set standards by which we can design our new developments. The learning from HAPPI and TAPPI principles has allowed for a set of design principles which support older people to live well.

What could have improved

Getting to a point in the project where we understood what consultant support, we needed took longer than expected as we had not allowed a long enough period of time for the initial scoping and evaluation work.

Jo Bennett, Assistant Director Housing Need and Supply: [email protected]