People are living longer: one in four children born today will live beyond 100. Our longer, healthier lives are cause for celebration but they do raise a number of challenges – in particular how we can encourage people to plan for, and stay active and involved in their later lives.
In July 2009, we published Building a Society for All Ages, the Government’s strategy for addressing these opportunities and challenges. This set out a coordinated package of strategic reforms including a major programme of pensions reform, legislation to ensure age equality, and options for reform of care and support. It also announced a programme of initiatives to enable people to prepare for and live well in later life. This package as a whole will support the changes that we all need to make so that we can live longer, healthier and more active later lives.
These initiatives were developed through debate and discussion with organisations in the private and voluntary sectors and members of the public. We consider it vital to their success that members of the public and other interested bodies should continue to be able to shape their development and implementation. To support this, we included a number of consultation questions in Building a Society for All Ages. We also held discussion events with the UK Advisory Forum on Ageing and over 600 members of the public across England and Wales.
This consultation response provides a summary of what we have heard both in written responses to the consultation questions and at consultation events. It also provides an update on how the initiatives set out in the Strategy have developed as a result of this feedback.
In particular, thanks to the constructive engagement of organisations from a number of sectors, we are publishing alongside this document A Good Place to Grow Older - A National Commitment to support a local response to the challenges and opportunities of our ageing population. We hope that this Commitment will help national and local government and their partners do more to listen to and address the needs of today’s older people and prepare for our ageing future.
Our thanks go to the many people and organisations who have given their time so generously to our discussions over the past few months. We hope that you will continue to take part in our collective endeavour to build a true society for all ages.
Hard copies of this document can be obtained by contacting the Age Stakeholder Team using the contact details below. Regular progress reports will also be made at meetings of the UK Forum on Ageing.
The Age Stakeholder Team Department for Work & Pensions Level 5, Caxton House Tothill Street London SW1H 9NA
Email:allages@hmg.gov.uk
