Make retirement a picture of happiness
IT’S the retirement development where residents have a wine-tasting session to choose the community’s house champagne and, in its care wing, tablets come on a silver platter rather than on a medicine trolley. Battersea Place, just across the Thames from Chelsea, has good reason to claim to be ‘London’s first luxury retirement community’.
Its existence is a sign of the increasing number of options open to retirees when they start to think about the life they want to live – and how they want to be cared for – in the years to come.
At Battersea Place, which is run by LifeCare Residences and stands opposite Battersea Park, residents can enjoy its pool, gym, cinema, library and restaurant in the knowledge that there is a 30-bed nursing home on site should they require it.
Prices start at £450,000 for a one-bedroom flat.
A more traditional retirement complex is Charters Village in East Grinstead, West Sussex, which is run by Retirement Villages. But, essentially for resident Dorothy Creelman, 82, and her late husband Clive, like Battersea Place, it was somewhere that had a care home on site. They moved there in 2014 when Clive developed Alzheimer’s, and he could be cared for in his final days at Charters Court Care Home.
‘We loved Charters,’ says Dorothy. ‘It felt safe and secure, plus all the staff and other residents were lovely. We bought a one-bedroom apartment in Charters Towers, the country-clubstyle development within the village.
‘It was very sad but I am glad we made the move to Charters when we did as the staff in the care home were wonderful.’
Prices at Charters Village start from £375,000.
Retirement housing provider McCarthy & Stone has a number of complexes where residents can sign up for its Retirement Living PLUS scheme, which gives them on-hand support whenever they need it. Bowes Lyon Court in Poundbury, Dorset, is one, but many residents are still very active, with one, Rowena Hampton, 78, specialising in pastel portrait paintings, to the extent that she was asked to paint a special portrait of Bowes Lyon Court’s duty manager, Jasmine Pearson, as a surprise wedding present. Onebedroom flats there start at £255,000.
Richmond Villages are part of Bupa and thus have a package that provides a level of care you might expect. ‘Our Assisted Living means purchasing your own apartment and then we provide a full hotel-style package which includes all meals taken either in our restaurant or brought to your apartment, a daily maid service, laundry and utilities,’ says David Reaves, head of marketingmark at Richmond Villages. Richmond has seven villages across England.
For those whose priority is space, Renaissance Retirement prides itself on how large its flats can be.
‘There are more people looking to downsize who are healthier and wealthier than ever before,’ says Robert Taylor,T managing director of Renaissance Retirement. ‘They own their own homes outright anda have a good deal of equity. TheyT don’t want to compromise ono space – and why should they?’
Prices at Renaissance Retirement,Re which has many flats alreadyal established but more currentlycu under construction, start at £160,000. st
Another firm with retirement homesho being built right now is Platinum Skies, which has a business model that claims to enable retirees to access more capital when they sell their main home. It has registered social landlord status and can offer purchasers a chance to part-rent, part-buy.
Platinum Skies currently has 1,000 homes being built in the South of England – in Bournemouth, Christchurch, Poole and Salisbury. Prices at its Monterey development in Christchurch start at £140,000 for a 50 per cent share of a £280,000 home.