An investment partner has been found to provide financial backing for the much-delayed 60-bed nursing home proposed for a site next to Rye Memorial Hospital.
While it’s understood the arrangement needs to be signed and sealed, the deal should finally see building work starting on the project — which was granted planning permission seven years ago. The identity of the backer has not been revealed.
Not-for profit care home provider Greensleeves Care says it’s still committed to building the Rye facility, although it concedes funding for the project proved a challenge after the pandemic. The charity has already spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on the project and utilities have been made available.
A Greensleeves spokesperson said: “While we recognise that delays are frustrating, we have continued to invest and work at pace on the project, and our focus is on ensuring the high quality of partnerships, design and build needed to deliver an exceptional facility for local families.”
Rye, Winchelsea & District Memorial Hospital — Greensleeves’ partner in the project — is not contributing finance, but its CEO Charlotte Kneer said she recognised local people’s frustration with the delay and was “keen to see the project happen”. She felt Greensleeves had a genuine desire to get on with the project.
Greensleeves intends to lodge a planning variation with Rother District Council to modernise the nursing home’s design, created by the Tooley and Foster Partnership in 2017. This will include ways to improve sustainability and energy efficiency.
The venture’s next steps and construction timetable will apparently rest on the outcome of the planning variation.
The care home operator points out that Covid-19 and the subsequent economic downturn had a huge negative impact on the care home industry — with the sector suffering reputational damage, lower occupancy levels and difficulty attracting residents. Rye Memorial Hospital has admitted that inflation has also been a key factor in the seven-year delay. The original cost of the Rye nursing home was put at £8m, but it’s unclear what the current figure would be.
The Memorial Hospital initially embarked on the project after a consultant advised that the hospital precinct should become a community care hub, and should include a nursing home along with the existing GP surgery, the intermediate care hospital and “extra care” accommodation for older people (St Bartholomew’s Court). A day-care centre — now rechristened ‘The Hub’ — was also part of the plan.
Greensleeves was chosen as the preferred care home operator, project partner and financial backer. The care home provider has paid £1.06m to the hospital to acquire the site on a long leasehold basis.
However, the nursing home project attracted some controversy after it emerged that the proposed site formed part of the High Weald AONB and that the facility was opposed by all the GPs at Rye Medical Centre on the grounds that it would make their clinical burden unsustainable. The doctors already attend to up to 19 in-patients at the Memorial Hospital, but 60 additional high-dependency patients at a nursing home would potentially quadruple this workload.
While research clearly identified demand for nursing care homes in this part of the county, there was also some debate about the number of beds needed in Rye. East Sussex’s supply development manager for bedded care originally identified a need for only 25 beds (nursing care) in Rye, rather than 60.
Fifteen of the beds at the Greensleeves nursing home are due to be reserved as subsidised places for local residents. The aim is for Memorial Hospital to charge Greensleeves ground rent for operating the home on its site.
The developers argued that the visual impact of the nursing home in the landscape would be limited.
Greensleeves already operates two care homes in the local area: Westfield (Hastings) and St Leonards-on-Sea.
Full disclosure: while supporting a care home in Rye, the author lodged an objection to the original planning application as the proposed site was inside the High Weald AONB and because the Rye Medical Centre GPs opposed the project.
Image Credits: Nick Forman , David Worwood .
good news on the funding partnership found for Rye nursing home. I know how well the partner runs their premises near Westfield, and having had the opportunity to talk to residents they are well cared for.