Labour's Social Housing Plans?

NHS bed blocking currently causes even the best run and well designed pathways of care to grind to a halt. But there are two sides to this coin. Finding placements is an adult social care problem, and constructing them is a social housing problem. Either way, the NHS ends up paying for the widening gap between the two. The solution could be found through Labour's local planning strategy. 

We are informed by their conference this week that the details of their strategy to reform local planning laws are still being worked out; but I think it could give the green light to projects to start providing social housing 'on prescription'; i.e. to residents on NHS risk registers according to their demographic identity and type of unmet needs. 

Yes this sounds like a form of ghettoisation but, as anyone who has ever lived on a council estate will know, it can also be a necessary part of protecting vulnerable people in society from abuse, not just dumping them all in the same pot of misery and poverty. 

After all, access to Council Housing already involves a threshold that is effectively controlled by the Local Authority and NHS anyway. So why not involve these authorities in longer term public-private contracts where the private money gets paid off through the appreciation of the material assests, and public investment accumulates wealth through developing the knowledge and skills of a local commuity and ensuring continuity of care.  

The conceptual infrastructure already exists go make this dream a reality. If the private investment in the housing stock is met by government investment into training staff to run the new primary care networks as virtual wards, then we could see the 'over 55' warden-controlled housing model being rolled out to meet the needs of other 'at risk' groups. 

Anti-social behaviour legislation already exists to make these tenancies subject to a series of conditions which are used to promote the sort of secure and structured pathway to recovery that the evidence base tells us they need. 

The business case also seems feasable. The accelerating tax burden is only going to be reduced through developing solutions at sufficient economies of scale to impact on the number of quality of life years we can buy with each pound of our gross domestic product. And access to 24/7 care would suddenly become a lot cheaper for the most resource intensive cases on NHS waiting lists.

I believe these sorts of local infrastructure projects are now necessary to free up GP resources and the meet the needs of the working well. Only in this way can we get a real return on the investment we make in this country through paying our taxes. Thus, it seems like a good deal for everyone, but will the public buy into it? Only the politicians will be deciding that.