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Under the plans councils facing a social funding shortfall will be able to levy an additional 2 per cent
Under the plans councils facing a social funding shortfall will be able to levy an additional 2 per cent Photo: ALAMY
By Laura Hughes, Political Correspondent12:01AM BST 24 Sep 2015
Elderly people should be given “emotional” support to encourage them to move to smaller homes and make way for younger families, surveyors say.
The Royal Institute for Chartered Surveyors said that more needed to be done to deal with pensioners’ "emotional distress" of moving house.
The institute has suggested that councils work together to arrange “accompanied visits” to suitable properties to “create a more positive experience”.
Moving house can be a nightmare
Moving house can be a nightmare Photo: Alamy
It also suggested that the Government pays for a new fund to cover the moving costs of pensioners to encourage them to move.
Pressure is growing on pensioners to move out of large homes and into smaller flats and bungalows.
Last year the All Party Parliamentary Group on Housing and Care for Older People said local authorities should provide housing and financial advice to people as they move into old age.
The report found that nearly a third of over 55 year olds have considered downsizing in the last five years, whilst only seven per cent of them have actually made the move.
Elderly women
The UK is ranked 14 out of 15 nations Photo: REX
It said: “Knowing ones neighbours and feeling a sense of community is also an important factor in deciding to move homes for some older people.
“RICS recommends that local authorities and industry work together to provide accompanied visits to suitable properties to mitigate emotional distress and create a more positive experience.”
Jeremy Blackburn, one of the authors of the report, told the Telegraph: "One of the things we heard was about the number of pensioners living in under occupied property, who might be asset rich in terms of the property itself, but are actually quite poor overall in terms of their savings."
Mr Blackburn was reluctant to provide a figure for how much elderly people will be offered to help with moving costs, but suggested the figure would be "more in the hundreds than the thousands."
Lord Newby, the Liberal Democrat and a minister in the Coalition, has said that more than half of people aged over 55 years old had spare rooms and that the Government should be doing more to help.
Liberal Democrat minister Lord Newby
Liberal Democrat minister Lord Newby
He told The Daily Telegraph: "I think for many older people, they want to downsize and it's really hard to do it, so anything that makes it easier must be a good thing.
"There's a lot of hysteria about forcing people to downsize, but this is just ridiculous, because nobody is forcing anyone to do anything. It's just helping people who want to do something already.”
Lord Best, who chaired the All Party Parliamentary Group, added: "We want to make it easier to move all round, that's the essence. Looking for a new home should be exciting and fun.
"We don't want people to feel as though they are being forced out of their homes, we want downsizing to be a positive experience."
Lord Newby added: "As people get older, by in large they don't want to move very far from where they live already, the challenge in many areas is that there just isn't good quality housing available, so that has to be looked at as well."
His comments come as the government is accused by a committee of MPs of "short- sighted mismanagement" for failing to collect "basic" information on how many homes had been built on public land which had been sold for house-building.
Meg Hillier, the Labour Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, has said it was an "insult to taxpayers" that the Department for Communities and Local Government had no idea how many homes had been built or how much profit had been raised by sales.
When the scheme was announced, the government pledged to free up enough land for 100,000 properties and Ministers have since promised to release enough land to allow a further 150,000 houses to be built by 2020.