Kyle Buchanan is a Director at Archio, a specialist housing-focused architecture practice. Archio’s recent work includes accessible housing schemes developed with Habinteg Housing Association through the Greater London Authority’s Small Sites for Small Builders programme. In his blog below he considers what would it take for ‘inclusive design’ to simply become ‘design’.
Most architects will define ‘inclusive design’ in technical terms – door widths, turning circles, the optional M4(2) accessible and adaptable and the M4(3) wheelchair user building standards. Those standards are very important but this technically focussed approach is also a symptom of a larger problem in which inclusive design is treated as a specialist add-on to a proportion of homes rather than the baseline for all of them.
Kyle Buchanan, Archio Director
A difficult context
Across the UK, councils face an acute shortage of high-quality specialist housing, homes designed to support disabled people, older residents and those with complex needs. Those residents can end up stuck in unsuitable temporary accommodation; in hospital beds they don’t need or in homes that actively worsen their health and independence.
At the same time, local authorities are spending millions to place people outside their own boroughs, fragmenting the communities and care networks that support them. This is an unwelcome side effect of treating inclusive design as a specialism rather than a default, making it expensive, both socially and financially.
This clearly problematic situation is going to have to change in the near future under the requirements of the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Act 2023, in which all Local Authorities must review local provision, assess unmet need, and forecast future demand by the end of March 2027.
What would ‘good’ actually look like?
These forthcoming regulatory obligations will be challenging to address, but also offer a moment for us to ask, ‘what does good look like?’
For me a good home is one that works for the person who happens to live in it, whether they use a wheelchair, are living with dementia, recovering from surgery or simply carrying a pram up the front step. When put in those terms, it is clear that most people will experience these conditions at some point in their lives.
Sadly, we still talk about ‘accessible housing’ and ‘specialist housing’ as though they are an anomaly within the housing sector, and this is the misinformation that Habinteg’s Accessible Homes Week seeks to redress. By designing homes that work for everyone from the outset, we can move beyond specialist terminology and focus on what really matters: high-quality delivery.
Designing for everyone
Our specialist housing projects (including two schemes developed with Habinteg through the GLA’s Small Sites for Small Builders programme) are located on repurposed former garage sites in Barking and Dagenham, turning them into social rent housing.
Working with Habinteg – who have a deep understanding of their residents – has underlined to us that compliance is only ever the starting point; meeting Approved Document M: access to and use of buildings requirements won’t guarantee a home that actually works for the person living in it.
It is the personal experiences of residents – which often sit outside of guidance – that can really bring a housing scheme to life. This could be the small, but important daily benefit that comes from step-free transfers from a car to the front door supported by using a barrier-free surface like resin-bonded gravel, or making sure that the view from the bedroom is a pleasant one, given that residents in specialist housing tend to spend more time in bed due to care needs.
Working with CAE
On projects like these, we frequently work closely with Habinteg’s inclusive design and access experts, Centre for Accessible Environments (CAE) which is part of Habinteg.
CAE has spent decades building the technical guidance the sector relies on, which means they have, quite literally, written the handbook. However, what makes them genuinely insightful isn’t just the standards knowledge, it’s the fact that they hold the resident’s perspective alongside the technical guidance.
Avoiding special categories
Standards, guidance and organisations like CAE are essential and I believe their work should sit at the heart of design practice rather than on the periphery.
We should be bringing quality, suitability and inclusivity to the forefront of the discussion around housing, as much as people talk about the number of homes built. It’s not a question of whether we can afford to design this way, we have to make it clear that we can’t afford not to.