We’ve been speaking exclusively with Allegra Care – one of the newest entrants to the UK care home sector. With the industry thriving we’ve been discussing their ongoing and future projects and plans…

Q. Allegra Care have recently formed a partnership with Moorfield Group to create a £125m portfolio of nursing and dementia care homes, how did this major partnership emerge?

Allegra Care is one of the two key strategies for Seniors Living Group (SLG) in the UK elderly housing sector, with the other being assisted living operator Amicala.

In 2019 Allegra commenced operations with St George’s Nursing Home in Weston-Super-Mare, a trading home that could be upgraded to operate the household model, which is key to Allegra.

With St Georges an important first step on the Allegra Care journey we appointed CBRE to introduce partners to accelerate the growth. Right from the first meeting with the team at Moorfield we felt an alignment of interest between us, and a shared vision of where the care sector was moving to. Moorfield’s position as one of the leading real estate investors in the UK, and their experience of senior living with Audley as well as the investments they have made in build to rent, student housing and hotels made them a logical partner for us.

Q. You’re hoping to build a portfolio of 15-20 care homes across Southern and Central England, what are some of the upcoming schemes and how can firms wanting to work on these schemes get involved?

Yes, this is for the initial £125m within the Moorfield and Allegra Care partnership and represents the first stage of a sustainable and exciting growth of Allegra Care.

The UK care home sector is made of some large national groups, and then regional players, and lots of smaller groups and single homes. Our strategy is to aggregate the smaller groups and single homes where the homes are in good mid-market locations and represent an opportunity to improve the operational model and real estate under the Allegra Care model. This aggregation will create strong regional operating clusters and we will then in new builds within this clusters. This will then be repeated in additional regions.

This strategy has commenced well, and we will be announcing purchases in the near future. These will set our first regions, and we will be seeking new groups to acquire. We look forward to hearing of homes or groups that might be suitable for us. With the homes we are buying we are excited to welcome the team at these homes in Allegra Care.

Q. What is unique about Allegra Care’s approach to modern nursing homes and how does your model learn from prior best practice?

The Allegra Care model is based on the household model, and is the award-winning operational model that Helen Jones, our CEO successfully devised and introduced in her native Australia.

The Australian sector is more advanced than the UK in the provision of care, operational models and funding, and having been out myself to see some of Helen’s homes on a study trip prior to meeting her I have seen just how successful the sector is for both resident and operators.

We have successfully introduced the household model to our first home St Georges, and we have been humbled by the way residents and the team have benefited from the model.

Q. Allegra is planning to create homes with provision for those with dementia, how do you design and create spaces that suit and meet the care needs of those with dementia and other similar conditions?

This is another benefit of the household model by allowing us to break the home down into smaller households it provides a better basis both in built form and in resident well-being to provide high quality dementia care. Spacious bedrooms with wet-room ensuites, active resident day space, and welcoming gardens are the key spaces, but then it is down to how to how the lighting, finishes, colours, and size of the spaces are designed to be suitable for those living with dementia.

Q. There is an undersupply of purpose-built care homes in the UK how significant is this issue and how will Allegra help to alleviate this in the areas you are targeting?

Put simply the UK is losing more beds per year than are being built, which much older stock no longer viable and with raising standards from regulators and consumers will be accelerated in their closure. Yet with supply going down, demand is rising as the ageing population wave comes through. This supply and demand imbalance will only accelerate without Government support. In Australia the Government saw the issue coming down the road and provided the support and direction to prevent the problem.

The UK new beds growth has largely been focused on the South East and the wealthy areas with 100% private pay underwrites. We identified that this area was overcrowded and that the mid-market presented the opportunity for investing in existing trading homes but also in new builds, where the operational model could be sustained on a mix of funding sources for residents.

Our belief is that the sector is evolving with customer’s shifting their expectations of what they not just aspire to but want, and that feeds into design and operations, but also increasing focus on sustainability and a long-term future for the built form. This is where our partnership with Moorfield is so exciting to create something that we can all be proud of and which can stand the test of time.