YOU ARE VIEWING ARTICLE - ID:20120511009

Title: Quality Mark Launched For Older People’s Housing Author: DMBC  ID & Publication: 20120511009 ~ The-Villager.co.uk  Area: Doncaster  Subject: Community News

A pilot scheme has been launched in Doncaster to help older people who are moving home find ones that better cater for their needs.

The Lifetime Assessed Scheme is a quality mark which estate agents can apply to properties either being sold privately or for rent, which are judged as more suitable for older people.

The scheme is based on the Exemplar Accommodation Standards the council has developed for extra care housing, as part of its new smarter ways of working with its partners, in this case local estate agents. The Lifetime Assessed Scheme takes a number of those standards and applies them to private homes and homes for rental.

The standards include good transport links within around a five minute walk, including a bus shelter with seating; pleasant surroundings or garden which is well maintained and easy to look after; a sufficient and flexible range of storage facilities large enough to accommodate a lot of personal belongings but not too high or low, so the older person can reach them easily; and a home with a secure feeling.

The scheme, currently on a 12 month pilot with estate agent Grice and Hunter in the company’s Doncaster and Epworth offices, has been created by Doncaster Council’s Strategic Housing Department, who have worked with collaboratively with a focus group of older people, who act as a sounding board to provide advice to the Council’s Housing Team on older people’s housing issues.

The scheme is a way of giving older people who wish to move to a new home access to more information about properties that are more suited to their needs.

Ruth Winter, project manager for the initiative, said: ‘This scheme is about providing older people with greater choice and information. The Lifetime Assessed Scheme is designed to encourage estate agents to provide better quality housing information to older people about the suitability of properties on their books and this in turn should help older people to choose the right sort of properties that can maintain their independence for as long as possible. The focus group, called the Doncaster Guardians, has worked with us on a range of older people housing issues over the last year including informing the design of the new extra-care housing scheme at Edlington and we are looking to forward to increasing the role Doncaster’s residents have in shaping the services that the Council provides in the future’

Mark Hunter, from Grice and Hunter, said: ‘We are delighted to be involved in this new scheme which we feel will be of considerable benefit to purchasers.’

There are no pictures to accompany this article