Current extra care housing (ECH)

The below table shows extra care scheme locations in West Sussex including detail on number of units, type of tenure and customer funding.

Table 1 - Current ECH schemes (2024)

Generally, ECH schemes in West Sussex operate at close to 100% utilisation with a waiting list of 179 customers (January 2024) ensuring vacancies are quickly allocated. West Sussex County Council's (WSCC) Extra Care Team work alongside district and borough council colleagues and providers to co-ordinate referrals and manage a nominations process for each ECH scheme.

Each of the ECH schemes has a different mix of available units for affordable rent, shared equity or full ownership. Nine of the schemes are exclusively available to customers eligible for WSCC funded social care support.

Figure 1  below shows the locations of the current ECH schemes in West Sussex. The information presented in the map can also be found in the Table 1 above. Adur is currently the only district and borough area with no ECH provision. Mid-Sussex, Crawley and Chichester have a good availability of WSCC exclusive ECH schemes. In Horsham, Worthing, and Arun, WSCC has less exclusivity over supply with greater private and shared equity arrangements.

ECH residents are a combination of people nominated by local authorities and those who have purchased via shared ownership or owner-occupation. There are currently 428 people (as of January 2024) who receive council-funded care support with an additional estimated 200-300 West Sussex residents using ECH care services via direct payments or self-funding.

Within ECH schemes, care services are funded in a number of ways, with the majority of people’s individual needs funded via assessed personal budgets. In addition, WSCC funds ECH services to provide core day and night support to enable the delivery of a variety of scheme-wide and emergency on-call support.

There are a variety of people using ECH in West Sussex. The largest proportion of clients are older people over 65 years of age. The 55-64 years age group is also significant and an indicator of an increasing need to consider this age group for ECH provision.

There are approximately 154 people between the ages of 18 and 64 who live in ECH schemes and are supported by WSCC. This largest group in this age range are people with physical and sensory impairments, people with a learning disability and those with mental health needs.

An estimated 6% of ECH users are from ethnic minorities compared to a West Sussex-wide population of 9%, showing an under-representation of ethnic minority clients in ECH overall. Future schemes need to consider the equality, diversity and inclusion needs of people from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds and encourage people from different ethnic backgrounds to opt for ECH.