8 Section Eight: Conclusions
This research on ageing has highlighted that three areas pose particular challenges as the Scottish population ages, and the age profile changes. These areas are Housing Supply, Adaptations and Support, though other consequences have been suggested, such as the impact on the housing system as a whole and the housing market, of having a very different age profile. Clearly against a background of an extremely tight fiscal position for the foreseeable future, large-scale spending commitments are going to be difficult to carry out. The ageing population places a particular challenge in this direction as it implies consistently growing costs for providing the same levels of service at present. The ratios of specialist housing stock to pensioners likely to need it in section four provided a good example of this, as unless provision is to fall, then costs will rise. There is not an easy 'stand-still' position, instead the choices will be to provide services differently, more cheaply or manage their decline in quality and/or the relative scale of provision.
Brief Conclusions
- The projections here suggest Scotland will have many more people ageing in their current homes both as a total number, and as a proportion of the pensioner population. If there is a constant proportion of older people in need of specialist housing then demand for specialist housing would grow commensurately. This could mean either greater pressure for public sector delivery, or the Scottish Government could facilitate its being built in the private sector. 20
- This research has highlighted the lack of an accurate picture of the people who use sheltered housing with no current regular collection of statistics on specialist housing residents. This kind of a collection could greatly improve the understanding of the specialist housing system, which in turn could lead to more accurate projections of future need.
- The research here has shown that prior decisions, such as those made by the Scottish Executive in favour of free personal care at home, though they had significant housing impacts, have not always taken into account the sometimes very significant consequences of their decisions for the housing system.
- Support for people to remain at home both formal and informal (following David Bell's work) was shown to be under great pressure. Costs have risen, though as the Supporting People data is no-longer collected we cannot be sure by how much. There is a significant challenge posed by the ageing population profile, with the large population cohort which is currently in the key later middle aged group moving into old age. This group supplies a very large proportion of the informal homecare, and will soon be moving from the age bracket which is most likely to give care, to that which is most likely to be in need of care.
- Research has shown that there are great disparities between local authorities in terms of the amount that they spend on adaptations per-head of pensioner population, and this is not easily explained by the rural-urban differential (or deprivation or other standard analytic factor). Speed of adaptation services are also important, as it has been shown that the longer it takes to enact an adaptation, the lower will be its likely effectiveness.