Lower Mill Apartments, Ewell

Specialist business property adviser Christie & Co has acquired a development site for housing with care operator, Birchgrove.

Birchgrove and partner Levanter Developments recently obtained planned permission for 53 extra care apartments at the Lower Mill site in Ewell, Surrey.

Christie & Co acted for Levanter Developments, a specialist property development and investment company based in Cobham, Surrey.

Oliver Tomalin at Levanter Developments said: “It has been a pleasure to work alongside Birchgrove to secure this planning consent which brings this historic site back into an excellent, complementary use. Through our extensive work with the community and detailed approach to design, we are incredibly pleased with the outcome.

“Levanter have focussed in the retirement sector over the past two years with 151 units either consented or in the planning process across three separate schemes in Surrey. With a specialism in planning procurement, Levanter are keen to secure more sites by the end of 2019 on either an unconditional or subject to planning basis or indeed in partnership with an operator seeking to remediate their planning risk.”

Birchgrove operates an innovative rental model allowing residents to have flexibility in older age, which separates their business model from many alternative ‘housing with care’ models.

Honor Barratt, Managing Director of Birchgrove, said: “For Birchgrove’s third site, we were looking for something with a little bit of magic – it needed to be in one of the best places to live in the UK. Christie & Co was tenacious in finding the site and we all worked together as a team, vendor, agent, and buyer to get it over the line in record time. I couldn’t be happier with the outcome.”