For Sandy Renson-Smith, leaving the picturesque Yorkshire cottage she had lived in for 42 years to move 150 miles to be with her adult children in Crewe was a much easier decision than it might sound. “When I discovered my daughter Jen was pregnant with her first child, I realised I needed to be nearer to them,” she said.
“We’ve always been very, very close as a family because of me bringing them up on my own,” added Renson-Smith, whose husband died in a car accident when her daughter was four. “And it’s so lovely being with them. Obviously I miss my cottage but coming here, and being next to the family, to me is worth more than its weight in gold.”
Now the 70-year-old retired primary school teacher lives in a purpose-built cottage next door to her daughter and son-in-law, Kieron, both 35, and their daughters, Romilly, four, and Talia, two.
Renson-Smith gets to see her granddaughters every day and takes Romilly to and from school. She has Strictly Come Dancing takeaway nights with Jen and has worked with Kieron on transforming the garden from a horses’ paddock into a cottage garden (plus football pitch).
Free childcare and gardening, treats from Grandma and the chance to see grandchildren flourish day by day – no wonder multigenerational living has become aspirational.
A survey by Legal & General found that nearly half of adults believe it would be a good thing if having three generations in the same household became more popular. A third of adults thought the government should give them financial incentives, and four in five thought people in multigenerational homes were better off.
How many people are actually doing it is a different matter. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) does not track the subject regularly, but in 2013 estimated that the number of households with three generations living together had risen from 325,000 in 2001 to 419,000.
When the ONS looked again in 2019, it used a different measure and found that there were 222,885 households that included a person under 45, an over- 69 and someone in between – 891,729 people in total.
After adding in two-generation homes with parents and their adult children, as a study by the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research (CCHPR) did in 2019, it amounts to about 1.8m multigenerational households.
Whether or not that figure is growing is probably down to the UK’s housing market and the bank of Mum and Dad. People may aspire to co-living, but combining two households can be a complicated and expensive business.
“It’s an interesting part of the changing dynamics in our social and family life,” said Stephen Burke, the director of United for All Ages, a social affairs thinktank.
“This is something a lot of families want to do if they can. But the big thing is having a property that’s suitable – big enough to have shared but also private space, and not everyone has that luxury. That’s the biggest thing holding it back.”
Some purpose-built properties exist. The architect firm PRP designed 880 homes for the Chobham Manor neighbourhood in Queen Elizabeth Park, east London, of which 75% were three-storey townhouses with a separate but linked annexe.
Government and local authorities give multigenerational families “very little support” in terms of public grants or tax incentives, Burke said. “Whereas if you’re interested in becoming a foster carer, quite often local authorities might support you to develop a bit of extra space in or on to your home.”
Clarion Housing Group, the largest social landlord in the UK, has begun a programme called Homeshare where older people can offer a spare room to a younger person who can offer practical support. But for most people, multigenerational living is only really possible for most by owning and adapting existing properties, as Renson-Smith did. Jen and Kieron bought and converted a barn on the edge of Crewe with an acre of land. It was easily large enough for an annexe.
“We were going to have a brick building attached to the house, but the price of that – with no plastering, no electricity, no plumbing, none of that – was horrendous,” said Renson-Smith. Instead, they went to one of the few firms specialising in the area – iHus, who bill themselves as “the luxury granny annexe experts”.
The all-timber structures are built in a factory offsite, then transported and constructed, which makes them substantially cheaper. Renson-Smith’s two-bedroom bungalow cost her £150,000, including planning permission, before fixtures and fittings. Her home is linked to the main house via decking.
She funded the building work through the sale of her Yorkshire cottage and pays a share of the utility bills. Jen and Kieron pay the council tax, which is discounted because Renson-Smith is disabled. The only drawback she could think of was that her post is not delivered separately but through the main house.
However, the annexe is owned by her daughter and son-in-law. CCHPR studies indicated that most people in multigenerational homes had a very high level of trust in their relatives and didn’t introduce any extra legal structures.
Occasionally this can cause problems – the researchers spoke to a woman whose husband moved his mother into a granny annexe and later died, leaving his wife and mother tied to the same property. They did not get on, but a clause in his will prevented his wife from dismantling the arrangement. No such issues are on the horizon for Renson-Smith, however.
“I’m very happy,” she said. “I like to help my kids. I don’t want them to wait till I die before they get something. It’s fine that it’s in their name. We’re close and that’s not going to be a problem.”
Not everyone can afford to move into somewhere new. Darcey Croft, a consultant midwife in Beaconsfield and the founder of Isomum.com, an isotonic drink for pregnant women, lives in a four-bedroom house with her partner, two children and granddaughter.
“My 18-year-old daughter surprised us with a lockdown baby,” she said. Madeleine went into labour early in the morning, so they started driving to hospital. “I ended up delivering her at the roadside at 5am. So that was an eventful morning.
“She lives with us and my granddaughter lives with us, and it’s just amazing. Every time I get back from work, she runs up to me with her arms open and this big smile on her face.”
Space is an issue, though. “It can get very noisy,” she said. “I guess we have the same complaints most families go through – two of us think we’re doing far more housework and chores than the others. But everybody’s working, doing their own thing.”
Madeleine, who is now 20, would struggle to find a place on her own and is planning to home school her daughter Delilah, who is nearly two, so her 50-year-old mother is happy for her to stay on.
“I think it works really well at the moment because all mums need support,” said Croft. “It takes away a huge burden if they’ve got people who can just step in. “If she ever did want to move out and set up on her own, I’d be hoping it was next door. I think I would miss them too much.”