Opinion: Audley Group Land Director talks retirement community demand, supply… and his mum

With an ageing population and the need for suitable, age-appropriate housing set to grow as a result, John Nettleton, Group Land Director at Audley Group shares his thoughts on how to best meet that demand and the ‘human’ approach that Audley takes to planning its retirement communities.
The demographics in the UK will increase demand for Integrated Retirement Communities (Retirement Villages), as well as other forms of older persons’ housing.
The benefits of IRCs, principally releasing family housing and taking pressure off NHS and social care services, are proven and increasingly recognised by politicians as part of the solution to these huge societal challenges. It is encouraging that the government have recognised this and set up an older persons’ housing taskforce. One of the primary objectives of that taskforce is to look at how supply can be increased to meet increasing demand and deliver these benefits to the wider society. Initiatives to increase supply include allocating land specifically for specialist housing for older people.
My concern about blunt measures to increase supply is that they won’t necessarily meet demand from a discerning purchaser about their final move. It needs to be remembered that whilst it may make practical sense to move to an IRC for care, support, security, and loneliness, as well as to release equity from a house sale, it is an emotive decision to sell the family home. If the location and offer of the IRC are not compelling, they will ‘stay put’ and ‘manage’ which is understandable, if ultimately in many cases not the right choice. Sadly, this often means that they end up in the dreaded and expensive care home because they haven’t made plans early enough and moved to age-appropriate housing that can adapt as they get older.
The outcome of the taskforce may be that planning authorities are encouraged/forced to allocate land for older people’s housing but will the location (location, location) appeal to older people? Location, as much as making the housing and facilities desirable so that people WANT to move there for quality of life, is key. At Audley, in addition to detailed demographic analysis based on our 19 retirement communities, we do use the subjective test – would my Mum want to live here?
Our sector currently struggles to compete with housebuilders for allocated sites because they have lower build costs and lower costs of capital, so to acquire attractive sites that appeal to our customers, we are forced to take on sites that housebuilders don’t want because they have planning challenges such as ones in the Green Belt or sites with Listed Buildings. Allocating land for our use will help choice, but how do we make sure they are desirable for our customers?
One solution to some of these issues may be for IRC operators to partner with housebuilders and other property companies. This may provide better land opportunities and could enable both to benefit from lower build costs. That is often a challenge to achieve because housebuilders are so focused on the general market, but I remain hopeful of more of these partnerships in the future with government support.
Another potential solution may be for land currently in ’care’ use to be retained in ‘care’ use. I am principally thinking about the vast NHS estate where surplus land is sold to housebuilders. Could it be used more strategically than just sold to the highest ‘day one’ bidder? IRCs WILL deliver a land value, but perhaps more important are the wider economic savings and societal benefits of freeing up the NHS and social care systems and adding movement to the housing market.
What is clear is that if we are to expand the IRC sector we need to be able to acquire more desirable sites and without national and local government support this will not be possible.
In the meantime, my Mum, and many of her generation, will continue to under-occupy family homes and take up NHS time. Time for politicians to be brave and encourage supply because huge demand is coming very quickly.
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