PIC and Octopus partnership SLIP announces retirement village investment in north London

Senior Living Investment Partners (SLIP), a £200m partnership between Pension Insurance Corporation (PIC) and Octopus Real Estate has announced an investment in a retirement village at Brent Cross Town, north London. 

This marks SLIP’s third retirement community investment and the second with Audley Group, a leading provider of integrated retirement communities (IRCs) following the acquisition of the Headley Court site in Leatherhead, Surrey, announced in July.

The joint venture between Audley and SLIP has agreed to acquire 100% of the long leasehold interest in a plot within the Brent Cross Town masterplan on which to develop a new retirement village as part of Audley Group’s Mayfield Villages. 

Brent Cross Town will be the second Mayfield Village, and the first to be developed in London. 

The Mayfield brand was designed to bring contemporary retirement living to a much wider audience and to give more people more choice over how and where they live as they get older.

The site benefits from outline planning permission and will deliver 147 retirement units along with 14,627 sq ft of amenities. 

The scheme is part of the Brent Cross Town development, a 180-acre masterplan managed by Brent Cross South Limited Partnership, being delivered through a 50/50 partnership between Barnet Council and the developer Related Argent.

Brent Cross Town is among Europe’s largest urban regeneration projects and, once completed, will become one of the largest net zero developments in the UK, with nearly 7,000 new homes, 3 million sq ft of offices, a high street and schools surrounded by 50 acres of parks and playing fields.

PIC has a purposeful investment strategy, through which the company backs the pensions of its policyholders over decades with secure, long-term assets. 

The company continues to invest significant sums in sectors that seek to address the accommodation shortage in the UK across the demographic spectrum. This includes temporary accommodation to aid those at risk of homelessness, social housing, build to rent, and retirement living. 

SLIP’s focus remains on the development of a portfolio of new, high-quality, retirement communities nationwide. 

Its ambition is to house up to 2,000 people in the coming years across 10 IRC developments to help address the current undersupply and increasing demand from an ageing population in the UK. 

Bryony Harrap, PIC capital senior strategy manager, said: “The creation of new communities through large-scale regeneration projects is completely consistent with PIC's purposeful investment strategy. 

“Our investment in the retirement village is one piece of the jigsaw that will allow the provision of new homes, jobs and living spaces for the people of Brent Cross. 

“Working closely with our joint venture partner Octopus Real Estate and leading retirement village provider Audley Group, we continue to play our part in meeting the twin challenge of an ageing population and an undersupply of appropriate housing while also providing long-term secure investments which underpin the pensions we pay to our policyholders.”

Kevin Beirne, head of retirement at Octopus Real Estate, added: “To have an IRC at the centre of such an impactful regeneration project is a fantastic result for the wider later living sector. 

“The net zero credentials of this scheme are laudable and demonstrate our commitment to helping the UK meet its net zero by 2050 target. 

“It’s fitting too that a retirement village benefits from this; older people spend more time in their homes than any other cohort. The efficiency of these new homes will deliver real value for residents in the form of thermal comfort and lower energy bills.

“Through our SLIP partnership with PIC, we aim to deliver some of the highest quality developments the later living sector has ever seen, with a drive towards both carbon efficiency and significant health and wellbeing benefits for the UK’s older population. This scheme is a great example of that.”