Giving people the time of their life during their retirement is the mantra of new London market entrant, Wallacea Living, reports Lee Peart

Established by former managing directors, Paul Morgan (Audley) and Paul Coles (Goldman Sachs), Wallacea plans to open its first development in Paddington in 2025.

“Paul Coles and I had been speaking for some time about the opportunity in London,” Morgan says.

Coles had been part of the team that financed Battersea Place for LifeCare Residences before leading Goldman Sachs’ retirement venture, Riverstone, while Morgan spent 15 years at retirement living pioneer, Audley.

“With Paul’s emphasis on the planning and development side of the business and mine from an operational perspective, we thought we had the skill set to succeed with a new venture,” Morgan says. “It was a great opportunity for me at a personal level. I’ve spoken at enough conferences about how these businesses should operate. It was time to put that to the test and try use the best practices I learnt previously and build on them or do things slightly different.”

After a slow start in recent decades, integrated retirement community (IRC) operators are now increasingly targeting untapped demand and affluence in the capital.

“In New Zealand you have 800,000 people over the age of 65 – 50,000 living in IRCs,” Morgan says. “In London you have one million over 65s and just over 1,000 apartments.”

The Wallacea founder says it was elderly Londoners’ love of an active social lifestyle that made the capital ideally suited to the retirement living offering.

“People in London love the atmosphere and the lifestyle and the friends they have so don’t want to move out into the countryside, so we have to find opportunities within the M25,” he explains. “There are different expectations in London compared to other regions and we need to make sure we meet those.”

Wellbeing ethos

When asked what will makes Wallacea different from its growing number of competitors, Morgan highlights its wellbeing ethos and in-house recruitment model.

“We have a real emphasis on wellbeing, where I genuinely believe a lot of people pay a lot of lip service to it, but don’t have a great deal to back it up,” Morgan notes.

The company has already hired care and wellbeing director Fionna Cannon who will be fully involved in the sales process going forward with Wallacea’s first marketing suite going live this month.

“Wellbeing is right at the heart of everything that we are going to do,” Morgan says. “That starts from the sales process. The health and wellbeing manager will be involved in the sales process and fully understanding our customers’ interests and what they want out of the coming years.

“If someone used to play golf and they want to play again but have a dodgy knee, it’s about rectifying that and being able to meet those sorts of goals. We want to help people try to achieve their real life goals. We want to make sure we have an emphasis on enjoyment and our people have the time of their life as they go through their retirement.”

In-house recruitment

The second key differentiator of Wallacea highlighted by Morgan was its ethos of in-house recruitment.

“Anyone who works on our site will be 100% employed by us,” Morgan notes. “There’s no franchising within any element of the business. All the people who come and join us will be inducted and trained by us, which means that anyone who lives with us can speak to any member of the team and it will go straight to the right person right away.”

Highlighting the need for a single well-trained team, Morgan cites a previous example of how a bar team member noticed one of the owners wasn’t quite behaving as normal and passed on the detail to the care team, who in turn paid a visit. As the situation evolved the lady in question required medical intervention.

Domiciliary care

With the opening of its first site in 2025, Wallacea Living Care will be registered with the Care Quality Commission as a 24-hour domiciliary care provider

The company intends to recruit a care manager with at least a Level 5 qualification along with an experienced team to provide the site’s care services.

“We will only be delivering care to people living with us; we won’t be serving people outside the complex, which will allow us to concentrate on delivering a better service,” Morgan notes.

“Our whole ethos is this is a home for life. Our care team will be trained to deal with various forms of dementia. We will have close links with district nurses and other specialists if people do need any acute care. We don’t envisage people having to leave us any longer than a few weeks before their final days should they need to at all. We will be able to care for them up until that point.”

Paddington development

The 15-floor Paddington site, which was purchased from Berkley Homes, will comprise 104 one- and two-bed apartments and a selection of penthouses priced from £900,000 to £3 million. Facilities will include an onsite restaurant, bar, cinema and multi-purpose function room for exercise and activity classes.

By targeting the capital’s affluent over 65s, Wallacea plans to offer a wide range of social and exercise activities to keep its residents mentally and physically healthy.

“There’s a misconception of retirement that people should start slowing down,” Morgan says. “We disagree with that. It really is the time to start to take advantage and have fun. When people talk about health and wellbeing there’s a lot of concentration on the gym. It’s not just about that. Yes of course people need to be healthy and physically active but it’s about mental stimulation as well.”

Rapid expansion

Looking ahead, Morgan reveals Wallacea’s plan for rapid expansion over the next decade as growth in the IRC market finally begins to accelerate following a sluggish start in the UK.

“Until 2010 the market was still fairly slow,” Morgan observes. “During 2010 to 2020 you could see some traction picking up. The villages that have opened in the last three or four years have sold out two or three times faster than those in 2009 to 2011. There’s a greater awareness, more information out in the press and I think ARCO has done a particularly good job in ensuring there are consumer codes in place so there is a little bit of protection for the consumer.”

Morgan reveals Wallacea planned to be offering “double figures” in terms of sites by the end of the decade.

With its ambitious growth plans, Wallacea Living will be one to watch as the IRC market looks finally set for take-off in the capital.