News

'Priority' Housing

New guidance from the government seeks to ensure that injured members of the armed forces get the housing they need. The guidance, from the Department of Communities and Local Government, means that injured personnel will be given a high priority on the waiting lists operated by Local Authorities:

The Secretary of State believes that it is important that Service personnel who have been seriously injured or disabled in action and who have an urgent need for social housing should be given high priority within local authorities’ allocation schemes in recognition of their service.

Local Authorities have a duty to provide housing that meets an individual’s needs and disabled people without a suitable home are invariably treated as a high priority already. This means that, in practice, anyone with a spinal cord injury who needs their new housing to be provided by the local authority will be considered a high priority, regardless of whether they are a member of the armed services or not.

Being considered a high priority certainly doesn’t mean that you are going to get the housing you need, though. There is a massive shortage of accessible homes in the UK, both in the private and public sector, and disabled people all too often find themselves sitting at the top of a housing waiting list for many months. For those with a spinal cord injury, this lengthy wait usually means making do with an unsuitable house or facing delayed discharge from hospital – situations that rob the individual of their independence and make those everyday things that most of us take for granted so difficult. The Aspire Housing Programme is designed to ease these problems, providing a temporary, suitable housing solution for those who live there, most of whom are, despite being ‘high priority cases’, waiting months for a permanent home to become available.

Aspire’s Campaigns Manager, Alex Rankin, says that guidance like that recently issued will have limited impact for those disabled people who need a home:

Local Authorities simply do not have enough accessible homes on their books. At Aspire we regularly work with individuals who are assured they are at the top of the housing waiting list, but who nevertheless face months and months of making do with unsuitable housing and total uncertainty at when that unacceptable situation will be resolved. Until accessibility is given a much higher priority when building new properties or updating older ones, this new guidance will do little to improve the situation for those who need a fully accessible home.