Plans for the 60-bed nursing home on Rye Hill have suffered a serious blow after one of the partners pulled out of the financing deal, forcing the withdrawal of the revised planning application.
A spokesman for London based property developer Zephyr X (ZX) claimed its partner Greensleeves Care had shown a lack of commitment to the £9 million project, adding that the charitable trust had failed to communicate satisfactorily with his company.
“We pulled out… we came on board to help, but we struggled to work with them. They weren’t communicating… we’d wait weeks to get replies,” he asserted.
The developer said the partnership would have endured under better circumstances and he continues to believe the proposed location on a 0.72-hectare field next to the Memorial Hospital precinct in Rye Foreign was a good site.
Before ZX spoke to Rye News, Greensleeves had only admitted to “a change of terms in the partnership” and declined to answer other questions about the financing. But the care home operator subsequently gave the following statement: “As it became clear that expectations were misaligned and we could not reach a solution that worked for all, the partnership working on the [planning] variation application has come to an end. As a result, the decision was made to withdraw that application; however, work has not stopped and we expect to resubmit [an application] in due course.
“Constraints like this are not uncommon in ambitious building projects, and we remain confident in securing all the support needed to progress the scheme. We continue to work closely with our core partners, including the hospital, and remain as committed as ever to advancing the new care home, with significant preparatory work already completed on site.”
However, Greensleeves’ insistence on its commitment to Rye is not only at odds with ZX’s comments but with a key statement in the care home operator’s own annual report for the year to 31 March 2025. This revealed that in order to achieve its strategic goals, “the Trust has entered a period of stabilisation, pausing development activity to focus on the enhancement of current services and strengthening of underlying cash generation”. The company’s development programme was described as one of its long term aims.
The conflicting statements are difficult to reconcile but may indicate that if Greensleeves is committed to Rye, its avowed long-term development strategy could mean it’s some time before spades hit the ground on the nursing home site. It may also explain Zephyr X’s standpoint, their frustration with poor communication and their ultimate decision to withdraw.
The care home operator’s report also noted difficulties with low home occupancy levels, higher spending on agency staff, recruitment challenges, delayed property sales and pressure on its reserves. The company recorded a net loss for the year to 31 March 2025 of £4.6 million.
It appears no substantive physical construction has occurred on the Rye site to date. Greensleeves reports that new planning advisors are being appointed.
It’s now seven-and-a-half years since the much-delayed nursing home project originally received planning permission and deeper questions are being asked about what has now gone wrong. Withdrawal of the revised planning application after only five months will inevitably delay development further.
Greensleeves paid Memorial Hospital more than £1 million for a long lease on the nursing home site. While the hospital owns the development land, it has no financial participation in the project.
Targeted at dementia care, the Rye nursing home was first granted planning permission in April 2018 for a sloping field site that lies just inside the High Weald National Landscape (AONB). The project was delayed by the Covid pandemic, damage to confidence in the care sector and a tortuous planning process.
Building costs for this sort of facility are currently estimated at about £150,000 per bed, which puts the total cost for a 60-bed nursing home at around £9m, according to one expert.
While it received substantial endorsement from the state health sector and from research showing care homes were needed in the area, the original planning application drew some controversy when all six GPs from the neighbouring Rye Medical Centre objected on the basis that the nursing home would impose an unacceptable clinical burden on them.
Full disclosure: while supporting a care home in Rye, the author lodged an objection to the original 2017 planning application as the proposed site was inside the High Weald AONB and because the Rye Medical Centre GPs opposed the project.
Image Credits: ZephyrX / Harris Irwin .