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New guide for planners on 'retirement villages'

23 March 2006

A comprehensive guide to planning continuing care retirement communities (CCRCs) will be published in April by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, in association with the Planning Officers Society. Relatively new in the UK, CCRCs are seen as a positive way of meeting the housing and care needs of older people and are expected to become increasingly common.

The guide, written by Robin Tetlow, of Tetlow King Planning, provides advice to planners as more proposals for CCRCs move towards planning application.

The JRF, developers of the UK’s first CCRC on the outskirts of York, will be hosting free seminars for planners in April and May. The seminars will focus on three key areas covered by the guide:

  • development issues, including demographic and market research, scheme type, consultation and tenure policy;
  • planning policy issues, including a review of local, regional and national policies and best practice;
  • planning application and development control issues, including a review of the way in which various planning issues, such as the Use Class classication (C2 or C3), design and sustainability, should be approached and balanced.

Examples of CCRCs in the UK - Hartrigg Oaks in York, Ryfields in Warrington, and Westbury Fields in Bristol - are reviewed in the guide which has a supporting CD of extracts from development plan policies, committee reports, Counsel’s opinion on the C2/C3 issue and key Secretary of State determinations.