Bring back the bungalow!

Sheila Pugh is 91 and in good health. She lives on her own in Congleton, Cheshire, where she takes pleasure in cooking for herself and moving about the place with a dustpan and brush, albeit a little gingerly at times. She has a private garden with a pond and views over arable land.

A lot of her friends and a great number of people of a similar age have had to move into retirement or care homes, cashing in their savings and surrendering their independence in the process. Mrs Pugh’s good fortune and the difference between her and so many other ninetysomethings is simple: she lives in a bungalow. ‘It’s a real lifeline for her,’ says her daughter, who is a friend of mine.

I get that. My parents-in-law moved into a 1960s bungalow in Swaffham, Norfolk, two years ago and although at first it was a wrench to leave their cottage spread over three floors, the move couldn’t have come at a better moment. My father-in-law is 85 and suffering from polymyalgia and my mother-in-law is 81 and struggles to go upstairs unaided. But they are both a long way off a nursing home. Their bungalow has come to the rescue.

So it was good to hear Brandon Lewis, the housing and planning minister, banging the drum for bungalows at last week’s Tory party conference. ‘We need to see more bungalows being built… it is around creating a product that older people find attractive enough that they positively want to move to because there is a psychological barrier to get over.’

Lewis was talking at a fringe meeting. I don’t imagine many head honchos from the big property developers were in the audience, because builders don’t see the point of bungalows — they think ‘single-storey dwellings’ take up too much land space and don’t pay their way.