Earlier this year, Susannah Millen attended the official opening of the Weald Heights care home in Sevenoaks, where she met Richard Pearman, business development director for operator Care UK, who told her more about the new home and the business
When Richard Pearman joined Care UK in 1997, it was a specialist outsourcing business bidding for local authority contracts. However, the late 2000s saw a decline in those opportunities. “We saw an opportunity to enter the private care market, so we picked up that challenge,” says Pearman.
Care UK opened its first dedicated private care home in 2009 in Chelmsford in Essex and the 120-bed home has turned out to be one of it’s most successful. After the acquisition of Care UK by Bridgepoint in 2010, the company was challenged to open 30 care homes in five years. “We’ve broadly hit that target and now we are going to exceed it,” says Pearman. “Since 2013, we have opened 29 homes with over 2000 beds.”
The operator will have opened five homes this year by the end of September. In 2018, it will be opening six, the year after 10 and at least eight in 2020. “It takes about three years from finding a site until we open the doors to a home,” says Pearman. “We’ve been very fortunate to have access to investment capital from Bridgepoint and very successful in finding sites and building homes,” he adds.
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