Scottish politics is changing and there’s at least a possibility that Labour will form the next government at Holyrood. If they do, Pam Duncan-Glancy MSP will swap influence for power, so let’s get to know her now. She thinks “the human rights of disabled people have taken a nosedive in recent years.”

Pam will chair a session on Design at the Housing & Social Care Accessibility Summit in September, and she wants 10% of all new homes to be wheelchair accessible. In fact, she wants all new homes to avoid unnecessary features which make life difficult for disabled people.

Pam says “Housing, social care and education for disabled people in general are the three things that I spend most of my time trying to resolve for people, and they don’t have the very basics of human rights.”

The right to enter and leave your own home is a big one. That affects your ability to work, socialise, shop, everything really. Yet 21,000 households in Scotland include disabled people who cannot leave their house because of stairs (figure from Inclusion Scotland). “You can’t do all of the things that people take for granted if you can’t get in and out of your house. And for some people, it’s literally the simple solution of a ramp being provided or a grab rail.”

Of course, Pam is not the first to highlight these issues. The concept of barrier-free housing has been around for a long time, and the design of new build homes is informed by Housing for Varying Needs, a design guide produced in 1999.

The current government, in the form of housing minister Paul McLennan MSP, has recognised that mandatory building standards and the current Housing for Varying Needs Framework are not the same thing. So some houses are still being built with features which impede the lives of people with disabilities. The minister published a consultation in which he declared that all new homes will have to meet the Scottish Accessible Homes Standard from the year 2025/26.

To quote his Foreword: “The Scottish Accessible Homes Standard will raise the baseline level of accessibility, adaptability and usability of all new homes – across all tenures – to meet the needs of people of all age groups, individuals and families, as well as the needs of wheelchair users and others.”

I’m not going to plunge into the copious detail of the proposed new Standard here. Better to leave that to people like Pam Duncan Glancy who as opposition MSPs, can scrutinise these things in Parliament with the help of all the disability organisations and other professional bodies. Pam has that extra perspective that dealing with constituency casework provides. She also has empathy, as a wheelchair user herself.

Along with Kieran Findlay, the editor of Scottish Housing News, I spoke to Pam about the kind of things which bring people and their complaints to her office. For example, carpets. One of her constituents was a wheelchair user who was very pleased to be offered a suitable house, but dismayed at the presence of carpets, which make it much harder to move around.

Imagine the difference between cycling a bike on tarmac and soft grass. Well, that’s how I think of it.

You can find Jimmy and Kieran’s interview with Pam Duncan-Glancy below.

A transcript of this episode is available here.

Tickets for the Housing & Social Care Accessibility Summit are available here.

Further reading:

• Euan’s Guide
• Christie Commission on the future delivery of public services

The Scottish Housing News Podcast is co-hosted by Kieran Findlay and Jimmy Black. All episodes are available here as well as on the following platforms:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Spotify for Podcasters