Jeremy Walford, Middleton Hall Retirement Village, 21st August 2024
Independent living residents move into IRCs (“Integrated Retirement Communities” or retirement villages, as they are often called) generally for positives reasons – easier to manage apartments with staff and services on hand. As genuine communities with facilities available from swimming pools and gyms to restaurants, shops and cafés and a sociable lifestyle, retirement villages should provide a more varied and fulfilling life than many older people experience living in family houses.
“Keeping our independence” by staying at home is a belief that many older people have when they are unaware of the opportunities that IRCs can offer. At Middleton Hall Retirement Village we believe that everyone moving into the retirement village should be making improvements to their lives – be that learning new skills, meeting new friends or becoming more fit and active.
For people purchasing (or renting) a property at an IRC in their 70s or 80s, they will often be living in that community for ten years or more and for all the positive health and wellbeing benefits of living in an IRC, their needs will change. This is where one of the main attributes of IRCs becomes key – Care.
Most IRCs offer care in residents’ homes either through their own team on site or via an external domiciliary care provider. This allows residents with care needs to “age in place” – in theory an ideal solution. IRC properties are designed with changing needs in mind – lifts in apartment blocks, level access and bathrooms that should be easy to adapt for care needs.
Operators with this model argue that providing homes for life that people can live in with changing needs is what older people want.
But as these retirement villages mature, how does this affect the resident community and the IRC itself? After 20 years operating, it is likely that the population of the village will be considerably older. This has implications for the use and viability of the central hospitality facilities – restaurants, gyms, shops, bowling greens, art studios. And with an older, more frail population of residents, are fit 70 and 80 somethings still going to be attracted to buy properties? This may have implications for both pricing of resales and length of stay in the long term. For IRCs with income derived from event fees (where a significant percentage of the resale price is retained to fund central facilities and infrastructure or subsidise service charges) will this make the model less attractive to customers of the future?
Evidence from abroad in mature retirement village markets would suggest this is likely to be a problem. A delegation of UK IRCs visited New Zealand earlier this year where retirement villages are long established and have ten times the market share of the UK. In other words, a mature market. And what did their British visitors find? That retirement villages without care homes are now adding them to their villages.
There is also another potential elephant in the room for IRCs. Dementia. This can be difficult to manage in an independent living setting and puts a burden on partners of people living with dementia, their families or neighbours. Some IRCs offer specialised care in this situation – for example, the Extra Care Charitable Trust have specifically trained staff at each community that specialise in supporting people living with dementia and their families.
There are though a minority of IRCs that provide care facilities on site, closer to the US model of Continuing Care Retirement Communities. Middleton Hall is one of those operators with care homes on site – in our case, three care facilities to meet different needs including high dependence care and a highly successful Dutch style small group living service which encourages positive life choices for people living with dementia.
Having built our first independent living properties in 2007, Middleton Hall could be regarded as a relatively mature retirement village. Although providing housekeeping services throughout the various properties we offer, we continue to find very low levels of personal care need – generally only 2 or 3% of residents, insufficient to register our own home care agency.
And the reason? As we offer flexible care services, people choose to move to care facilities with built-in care and support as their needs change (short or longer term) rather than staying put and relying on home care visits. With the choices available, this results in a variety of situations including couples where one lives in their independent property while their partner lives happily in a care facility. This flexibility means couples can spend time with each other every day but removes the burden of care allowing both to live fulfilling lives together and separately.
For this model to work, this does of course require the care facilities to be consistently excellent so that people regard it as a genuine choice. As care home operators know, that is not always easy.
As the UK market for IRCs grows and matures working out the best way of delivering care will be a key challenge. My long-held suspicion is that increasing numbers of us will be providing care homes on site in the future.
Certainly, Middleton Hall Retirement Village is continuing to invest in continually improving our care facilities to provide choice for all our community.
Jeremy Walford is the former managing director and main shareholder of Middleton Hall Retirement Village near Darlington. In 2019 he sold the company to all 180 employees to form the UK’s first John Lewis style employee owned retirement village. He remains a Trustee and Non Exec Chair of the Leadership Board.
