Care property appraisal, planning use and change of use
The building is the one decision you cannot take back.
You can change a policy, replace a manager and rewrite a statement of purpose. You cannot move a building, and you cannot argue a use class into existing. Almost every care property problem we are asked to solve was knowable before somebody signed.
Free check: could this building hold your service? →Two minutes · no email address
Before you sign anything
What catches people out
Six things. The first one ends more care property projects than the other five together, and it can be checked in an afternoon.
Use class
The building is not allowed to be what you want it to be
A house is a house until the planning system says otherwise. Running a registered care service from it is usually a different use, and consent is a decision somebody else makes, on their timetable, with the neighbours entitled to comment.
Capacity
The rooms do not add up to the registration
Bedrooms that are too small, no room for staff, nowhere to have a private conversation, one bathroom between too many people. The number you can register for is set by the building, not by your business plan.
Fire
Nobody costed the life safety work
Means of escape, compartmentation, detection, and what happens if the people living there cannot evacuate themselves. It is the largest unbudgeted number in most care conversions, and it is not optional.
Access
A first floor with no way up it
Step-free entry, corridor and door widths, a lift or ground-floor provision, bathrooms that can take equipment. Retrofitting access into a building that will not take it is where budgets disappear.
Tenure
A lease that will not let you do it
Term too short to justify the spend, use restricted by the lease whatever the planners say, alterations needing consent, and no right to assign when you eventually sell. All knowable before exchange.
Objections
The application nobody prepared the ground for
Care applications attract objections, and the objections are rarely about care. Parking, traffic, noise and precedent. Handled early it is manageable. Handled at committee it is usually too late.
Free · No email address · Nothing stored
Could this building actually hold your service?
Five gates, in the order they will stop you. Tell us about the property and you will see which ones are clear, which need somebody's consent, and which one you are standing at right now.
- 01The property
- 02The service
- 03The five gates
Choose one
What are you trying to run there?
About the property — change any of it
Answer for the building as it stands today, not as it would be after the work. If you do not know something, say so — that is an answer in itself.
The five gates
Indicative only, and based on what you have told us about a building we have not seen. It is not a planning opinion, a building control decision, a fire risk assessment or a registration decision, and none of those can be given from a web page. Nothing you enter is sent anywhere or stored. Before you commit money, get a proper appraisal, a solicitor and, where it matters, a fire engineer.
What we do with a building
In this order, because designing before you know what the use can be is the most expensive mistake available in care property.
01
Appraise it before you commit
Use, capacity, access, fire, tenure and cost. An honest answer on whether this building can hold this service — including, often, that it cannot.
02
Design around the registration
Our architectural designers draw for the service that has to be registered and inspected, not for a generic conversion. The two are not the same drawing.
03
Take it through consent
Planning, change of use, building control and the fire strategy — with the groundwork done early rather than an argument at committee.
04
Get it registered and open
A building is not a service. The registration, the statement of purpose and the opening are planned alongside the works, so the doors open when the keys do.
We will tell you when a building is wrong, and we would rather do it early.
The cheapest advice we give is the advice that stops somebody buying the wrong property. It is also the advice people remember, which is why we are still here.
What that has looked like
Names withheld, because most of this is nobody else's business.
Inherited
Property, and no idea what to do with it
Somebody who had inherited property and no plan for it. We appraised what it could hold, and got it let to a care provider — income from a building that had been sitting there doing nothing.
Designed
Acquired, drawn and built for the service
Buildings found, acquired and designed around the service they had to hold, with our own architectural designers doing the drawings rather than an architect being briefed second hand.
Extended
More capacity without a new registration
Extensions to existing properties and the registration varied to match — usually faster, cheaper and far less risky than starting a second service somewhere else.
Not ready to talk yet
Three other ways in
Plenty of people are not ready for a phone call, and that is fine. Nothing here needs one.
Current opportunities
Property and businesses available now
Off-market and confidential. Tell us what you are looking for and we will send what matches, including buildings without a business attached.
See what is availableResources
Use class, consent and conversion
What changing the use of a building for care actually involves, and what it tends to cost before anybody has laid a brick.
Read the guidesStarting out
If the building is only part of it
Registration, the manager, the money and the order to do it in. The building is one of six decisions, and it is rarely the first.
See how starting worksProperty work
Two pieces that sit under this, each available on its own.
Property development coordination
Care schemes from feasibility to opening, with the regulatory read running alongside the build rather than arriving after it. Regulation 15 review is usually the first step.
Supported housing and care accommodation
Where the housing and the care are separate and the structure decides whether either works. Getting this wrong is expensive and slow to unwind.
Working on a scheme rather than running one?
Architects, planners, developers and investors bring us in early to check whether what is being designed can actually be registered. How we work with other professionals, or go straight to the section for developers and investors.
Send us the address before you send us the deposit.
Thirty minutes, no charge, no obligation. A postcode, some photographs and what you want to run there is enough for us to tell you whether it is worth going further.