Audley Retirement Villages has strengthened its Land Team with two new hires. This follows the promotion of John Nettleton, Land Director, to the Board and signals the luxury retirement village developer’s continued success and ambitious expansion plans.
John Nettleton joined Audley in 2007 as a Regional Land Director, from Colliers, and became National Land Director in 2010. Since joining Audley, John has overseen the acquisition of and planning permission for nearly 600 plots of land with a GDV of over £250M. Audley currently owns 10 villages across the UK with one complete, six in phased completion, and a further two due to commence development in 2015. The tenth is awaiting planning permission. A further two sites are under offer.
The two additional hires for the planning team reflect an increase in activity for Audley Retirement Villages as it continues to grow and build on more sites across the UK. Tom Bagnall joins the team from Octopus Healthcare/MedicX where he was a Development Acquisitions Surveyor, responsible for acquiring sites for Care Homes and Medical Centres. Matthew Armstrong was most recently at The Croudace Homes Group as Area Land Manager responsible for acquiring land for residential development. With over twenty years’ experience between them they will bring a great deal of knowledge of both the Care Home sector and Residential sector to further expand the depth of the Audley land team.
Land Director John Nettleton commented: “Audley has expanded rapidly over the last few years and is projected to grow by another 300% by 2018. Finding suitable land to develop is obviously critical to our ability to achieve these goals. Both Tom and Matthew bring a great deal of experience and expertise to the business and I am delighted to be working with them.
“I’m proud of our 100% record for gaining planning permission with no appeals and these are on sites which have delicate planning issues on sensitive sites.”
These include sites with listed buildings, in the Green Belt, with traffic issues, strong neighbour objections and sites that are unsustainable for residential development
Audley Retirement Villages’ turnover in 2014 was £40.1million. Over the last 5 years, since 2009, this has grown by 855%. Since 2012 alone turnover has grown by 265%, from £11 million. The rapid expansion of Audley reflects the surge in demand for high quality retirement living with care provision, in part due to the ageing UK population as well as rising asset wealth of the over 55s.