Boom in care home openings

The care sector has shown significant resilience despite the pressures of the Covid-19 pandemic and confidence is returning to the market with a large uptick in the number of new homes opening, according to new research.

A six-monthly review undertaken by CSI Market Intelligence shows that care home closures for the first six months of 2021 were the same as in 2020 with openings up by 6.5% on 2020, 35% higher than 2019.

The openings provided around 4,400 new beds and, due to the average size of a care home that opened being larger than those that closed, resulted in a net increase of around 1,000 beds when beds lost through closures are included, compared to a 153 net increase throughout the whole of 2020 – which was the only annual net increase in beds since before 2015.

Nearly a third of all openings this year have been in the South East region, who only accounted for a fifth of all closures, and there were no openings at all in the North East, whilst they accounted for 4% of closures, so it shows a disparity in activity by region.

The operator with the most openings was Signature Senior Lifestyle who opened 9 homes, followed by Barchester Healthcare with 5, and then surprisingly by a West Northamptonshire Council with 4 openings. The Council also purchased 3 care homes from Shaw Healthcare.

86% of care home openings were in the private sector, 9% not for profit and 4% public. This compares with 74% of closures in the private sector, 21% not for profit and 5% public.

Randolph Hill Nursing Homes Group has opened its seventh nursing home in Kirk Lane, Livingston

And of those homes that closed 52% did so with a Good CQC rating – 74% of all homes carry this rating – suggesting it was commercial reasons rather than care quality that caused their closures.

Mike Short, founder and director of CSI Market Intelligence said:  “It was a breath of fresh air to see a marked change in the trends of recent years where closures were outnumbering openings at a two to one ratio and is especially encouraging considering what the sector has had to battle through over the last 15 months.”

CSI Market Intelligence has published Say Hello Wave Goodbye annual reports on openings and closures for the last 6 years.

To read the complete 6 month review go to www.csi-marketintelligence.co.uk/shwg.html

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