Dementia-friendly ‘prefab’ apartments could be coming to Britain to house our ageing population.
Prefabs - or prefabricated houses - were erected across the UK after the Second World War to tackle the country’s housing shortage.
They could now be the answer to Britain’s dementia crisis with numbers of sufferers expected to double in the next two decades.
The concept was the brainchild of the founder of Swedish furniture giant Ikea, Ingvar Kamprad, before his death.
Billionaire Mr Kamprad hoped to allow dementia patients and their carers to remain living at home for longer and made a donation to a Swedish dementia charity.
The charity approached prefab building firm BoKlok to develop the apartments which have automatic doors and wide entrances to accommodate a wheelchair.
They are built around park-like communal gardens for picnics and barbecues.
Should one of the residents have dementia diagnosed, the flat can be easily upgraded with a host of special features such as adjustable wash basins, knobs and heat sensors on the ovens, and an alarm button in the bathroom.
BoKlok is holding talks with the local authorities in Bristol and Swindon over building its standard prefabs and its dementia-friendly apartments could follow.
"In Sweden the number of people aged 80 or over will increase by 85 per cent from 2015 to 2030,” Jonas Spangenberg, the chief executive of BoKlok.
"Society needs to find a solution where more people can stay at home for longer, and actually people want to stay in their own home. This is also much cheaper for everybody."
There are currently around 850,000 people with dementia in the UK. This is projected to rise to 1.6 million by 2040.
Two thirds of the cost of dementia is paid by people with dementia and their families.
Unpaid carers supporting someone with dementia save the UK economy £13.9 billion a year.
The prefab flats are built in a factory then dropped in to place on a building site for assembly. This meaning they are a quick way to increase appropriate housing stock for the UK’s ageing population.
A line of eight flats can be erected, plumbed in and wired up in just a week. They come complete with an Ikea kitchen suite and furnishings.
The height of the shower screens has been fixed at 1.2 metres so that a carer can bend over the side to wash their charge without getting splashed.
BoKlok is already preparing to construct 150 timber-framed eco-homes in Worthing, West Sussex.
