How to run a successful retirement village

Dominic Morris: Hello, I am Dominic Morris, head of the senior living team at Gowling WLG. Today in our senior living podcast series, I am joined by Tom Lord, Chief Operating Officer at Inspired Villages Group and we are going to be talking about some of the key issues facing the operators of retirement villages - hi Tom.

Tom Lord: Hey Dominic, how are you?

Dominic: Yes I am good thank you. Could you begin by telling us a little bit about your role and a little bit about Inspired?

Tom: I am the Chief Operating Officer for Inspired. That means I oversee the day to day operations of all six villages of our at the moment, look at opening the coming sites over the coming years and creating really great communities for older people to live. I also get involved in technology, overseeing IT and of course we cannot go without a good bit of risk management these days given the last year that we have had, but really all of it is focused on creating great resident experiences and helping people to live the best years of their lives.

Dominic: Fantastic. So you have touched obviously on last year and the COVID-19 pandemic. Could you tell us a little bit about what the experience your residents had over the last year or so and indeed the staff onsite, how they found things?

Tom: I think it is worth just saying generally our villages are really focused on holistic wellbeing, so ensuring the people that live with us have great mental, social and physical wellbeing, and that means keeping people active, keeping people socially engaged and mentally engaged, which helps keep people healthier for longer.

We love, we pride ourselves on having villages with buzzing social lives in a great community. 18 months ago we realised that that may become a challenge, and so as we saw this pandemic coming to our shores we started thinking about how are we going to, first and foremost, keep people safe? That involved us creating a crisis plan and a very robust plan back in February 2020 that went through a series of steps, all the way through to what would we do if we needed to lock down our villages. We had that plan in place really early on, that looked at the kind of tactical how would we address things, how could we keep people safe and how could we ensure cleanliness and reduce any potential for an outbreak. It also meant that very early on we could start to look at the wellbeing side of things and people were restricted to their own homes or restricted to where they could go whether they were in the villages, out of the villages.

We started to think then about how we could keep people engaged as well as safe. So throughout the last year, yes it has been a constant kind of crisis response mode across six villages and 850ish people plus the team members, how could we keep all of those safe. I think we have come through this very well; because yes we do have communities, but they all live behind their own front doors and the serious protocols, and I want to say restrictions, but the guidance that we gave was really focussed on reducing contact and ensuring social distance, and we called it "social but safe." Through the pandemic we have had about 11 cases of COVID-19 out of 850 people over the last year, which just shows the prevalence rate compared to the wider population and how well equipped retirement communities are to deal with the pandemic, especially when the management team's operators are all focussed on delivering against a plan. What was great is that the teams at the villages put in place all the protocols related to the plan very proactively and then started thinking about well what can we do because we have got to close our facilities down; so we introduced balcony exercise classes or patio exercise classes where one of our wellbeing navigators would be out in the communal square and everybody would join from their balconies or patios or social distanced in their gardens. The teams in the villages then did amazing things because through adversity obviously comes a lot of innovation, and we had one person that took an old bike and made it into a cocktail bike and he would cycle around the village and make people cocktails and deliver them to their doors so they could go and sit on their balconies and enjoy a cocktail hour.

Dominic: So that is now a standard is it throughout the villages?

Tom: It is now a standard yes. We have pivoted to home delivery of food rather than the restaurants being open, but then to the advantage of technology and zoom classes for exercise, we did zoom wine tasting events and just all sorts of different activities that would keep people engaged and of course through last year that was fantastic. The great weather helped and then as we got through to the third lockdown I think it was more difficult, the dark nights, but again everyone embraced things like zoom by that point and would help people to understand it a bit more.

So they were all engaging and we ended up with pub quizzes and gin and tonic hour and exercise classes and recitals from violinists all over zoom. It helps keep people really engaged and now as we come out of it we have been able to reopen gyms, which are still restricted to individual households to keep people safe and still using the pool, and it is great to see over the last week or so the restaurants getting busy again and people getting out and really starting to engage and socialise. Right now it is a great place to be as we bring life and vibrancy back into the villages so we can be more pleased as everybody gets a bit more freedom.

Dominic: That sounds great news. I think one of the things that I found particularly inspiring, if you will forgive the pun, that some of the online feedback from your residents talking about their experience and how much they have actually been grateful really for living in your communities during the last year rather than being out in the general community.

Tom: Yes we did a thing called the "village voices" later in 2020 which just gave the residents a voice and it was great to hear, just amazing to hear how people enjoyed being in the village and there being some kind of interaction with the rest of the community. It was not that we kept all sorts going on but even just walking around the villages where you have got 90 acres of land there is a lot of walking that can be done, still within the safety and the confines of the village, so I mean that feedback was fantastic.

One of the other things that we launched early on in the pandemic was a Facebook group that was really focused on just putting posts out there, we were looking for ways to use technology to engage people, to engage our residents still and so we created what we called the "virtual village centre" on Facebook. Very quickly we realised that why restrict it to just the residents. There is a much bigger group of over 65s out there so we extended that to their friends and family, to our teams' friends and family and ultimately just have it open. It is easier to manage when you are not trying to put restrictions on these things, and so we created this group where we put posts of the chefs showing people how to create a great meal or an exercise class, sharing things that people could reminisce on from over the years, sweets from years ago and that kind of thing. We actually ended up gaining about 23,000 followers across the UK on this one virtual village centre site and had some fantastic feedback through that of how it provided some sort of virtual community.

I think one of the biggest lessons for me out of the whole pandemic is that we need community and communities support each other. Our villages create great communities of people in similar situations and they can support each other, and our teams support them. You just create great outcomes when people come together rather than people being stuck in their own homes. My mom and dad were in their own home for a long time and whilst they have contact with people it was not the same as regular seeing and knowing that if you step outside your front door then you will see other people around. So in a strange way it has been a successful pandemic for us, and I think the whole sector is now seeing increased enquiries and sales based on a change in perception of what retirement villages can do in creating great communities.

Dominic: Excellent, excellent. So moving I guess on to another topic, tenure models and offering I guess a range of tenure options. You are typically, or historically a for sale model, so people buying long leases for their apartments or homes, and now you are looking to diversify a bit. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Tom: Yes absolutely. I mean traditionally I think the sector in general was more around the purchase of a long leasehold and you are no stranger to that, that is the way they built it, but it must have been around two years ago now, we started looking at the option of flexing those tenure models, and introducing rental was the big one for us. So we did that around two years ago now. I think the pandemic got in the way a little bit as it did with most things, but you can now buy or you can rent, especially if you want to make the most of capital in the current world of seniors and people moving in, want to cash in on the equity in their homes and then rent, then why would we not allow that. We see it as being a growing part of the way that people buy into retirement villages in the future and it really does make sense, and I think the whole sector is starting to embrace this and we will see a lot more activity around it. As we have come through the last few months with a lot of increased enquiries and activity, rental is getting much bigger, playing a much bigger part in that and around 20%25 of our reservations are now rental. We think it will stay around the 20-25%25 as we go forwards, and it makes no difference to us if you rent or if you buy - it is not that we have certain properties over in one corner of the village that are rental, we pepper pot them, you choose your preferred apartment just as you would if you were buying and you then rent and live in the villages exactly the same. You are paying the same service charge, you are just paying rental rather than buying it outright and then everything else stays the same. For me, it is not a case of there being differences between sale and rental, at the end of the day a resident in the village is part of the community and everybody plays the same role no matter what tenure they are under.

Dominic: That is really interesting, and I think as you say it is part of a wider trend we are noticing - there are some people specialising in rental, but increasingly operators are offering some rental and that is growing as a market share. I would like to move on to another hot topic and it is sustainability and ESG. We have seen announcements about your new Caddington village which is coming forward on a zero net carbon basis, but in terms of the operational piece, what does sustainability mean for you and indeed this wider social value question.

Tom: I mean we call it responsible business, because whenever I say ESG to anybody no one can remember what the E, S or the G stand for. So it's responsible business and it is about the environment, it's about social value, social impact, governance and help and our colleagues and our culture in that as well. As you said we have got Millfield Green, which is in Caddington, coming through as net zero carbon (regulated energy) and that is using ground source heat pumps, solar etc. and that will provide a zero carbon village which is absolutely the future. I think there was a recent report out from, I think it was PWC, that said that the over 65s/over 70s are as concerned, if not more concerned, about the way that they pass the world on to future generations, and so we see that as a big part of the future. So whilst Millfield Green is the first, all of our future villages will be built to those net zero standards, we are committed to that. It is much wider that that - within the villages operationally you have got to think about reduction in waste, we have got to think about increases in biodiversity. We have got to think about cutting those single use plastics out of our supply chain, especially the immediate supply chain and reducing our food waste and supporting people in that, so there is a big piece around social impact.

In previous years we have been supporting a befriending service down in Kent, which is close to our newest village that will open at the end of this year. The befriending service was being made redundant and we thought it was such a fantastic service that it shouldn't be lost, and so we took that on ourselves and created what we call Inspired Friendships, and that is about supporting lonely older people within the community with great events for the wider community, not just the village community. We put on events for people to come together. Now when COVID-19 came and you can't put events on when everybody is in lockdown, so we introduced calls of friendship. We had about 100 people that were supported by members of our teams who would call them once a week just to check in and say hello. We introduced the pen-pal scheme with a school and the members of Inspired Friendships particularly, where we had primary school children writing to older people and vice versa, and the older people were helping the primary school kids with their life stories and writing letters, not typing them but also they were overjoyed to receive letters from six, seven, eight year olds. One that always stuck out to me that we heard about was a child that wrote to them and told her how wonderful her parents had been. Her mum had been there during the home schooling time, her sister was very supportive and she put in her last line it has been great to get all of this off my chest and that is just lovely, with lots of pictures and stuff drawn so that has helped a whole bunch of people that will never live with us. These people may consider living with us one day but then that is not what it is about. These people are not looking to move into one of our villages but they are experiencing loneliness within the community. Now as we get back to normal we will start to reintroduce some of the events so the park walk, you've heard of park run but I want the park walk for anybody that is older and lonely getting out into the park on a Sunday and going for a long walk. Events like the talking bus, so we usually have about 20 to 30 people all meeting at a bus stop at a set time to get on the next bus to somewhere for a cup of coffee and with their bus passes, sit on the bus, all have a chat, go for a coffee, come back on the bus again, a good two hours out and they just turn up. We are now working with other contractors looking at apprentice schemes, looking at how we can bring a new generation into building, into working in the villages and add social value thought that way as well. I could go on about this for a long time because it is close to all of our hearts at Inspired but it is not just about what we do with the villages, which are holding a lot of social impact in themselves but the wider initiatives, the training, the apprenticeships, the friendship.

Dominic Morris: So it is worth saying isn't it. It's evidenced that you are an integrated part of the local communities. Some people say that retirement villages are quite isolated places but it really isn't the case and all the examples you have given there just demonstrate the benefits they can bring to the wider communities. There is also the piece around the staffing numbers. You employ a lot of people at these villages don't you?

Tom Lord: Well we have about 30 directly employed team members of the village and there was a point there about, we do want to be part of the community. I mean ultimately I would want to be the trusted service provider for certain things to older people within the wider community. On the future villages the restaurants are open to the public when we get back to normal times or the new normal, but it is about being part of a community. There is no point in going anywhere and building 150 properties that are focused on adding value to the local community and then locking everybody away, so I really don't like it when you hear things like they are just age ghettos, these are vibrant villages with people living independent lives just in properties that are right for them, which are perfectly designed to age well. It helps people stay healthier for longer and reduces the impact on the NHS and GP visits, it helps get people out of hospital quicker because we can get the rights levels of domically care and we can support them through the teams at the villages, and so retirement living and retirement villages and communities should be seen as a really big benefit going into local communities.

It helps free up open market housing. I often find that people move from quite big family homes that are under-utilised. When the time is right for that person, and we are not saying you hit 65 and we think you must move out of a lovely house, but there is a point where it is not as easy to maintain the big house or the big garden and whilst you don't want to downsize into a small property, we do want is to right-size and right-size the number of rooms that you've got because who needs those extra three bedrooms and two bathrooms to clean, but you do want the size of the lounge that you have always had and a great kitchen and dining experience etc. So it is about right-sizing and we have often talked about the fact that there are not many people whose homes have got a restaurant, a chef, a swimming pool, some great gym equipment and somebody to help them use it, activities and a ready-made community on their doorstep and that is what we want to provide.

Dominic Morris: Great. Now that is really interesting. We touched on it the role of technology and you mentioned the virtual village and all those applications that are evolving. I think technology is a really interesting piece in itself because beyond the bricks and mortar of this dedicated purpose built accommodation, technology across real estate generally has an increasingly important role to play in getting the most out of the lifestyle experience. Are you able to say a little bit more about how that looks for Inspired and what your views are on the future application of technology for your villages?

Tom Lord: Yes I think technology is going to play a big role. Technology isn't going to replace personal support and the handholding and all of that stuff that we do on the caring side of our business, but it certainly will support it and technology can be used really well to support community and make life easier so we have been trialling and are rolling out at future villages a system called Cubigo. Now Cubigo is like a village hub so you can go on there, you can book into the restaurant, you can book into a Pilates class, you can log a maintenance issue. We can use it to communicate what is going on around the village and really help people to move in well and start their journey in the village well because all of the information that they need is there to hand. How they can contact and connect with other people in the community through that so technology can really support in creating a great community feel and that would be the hub.

We have also invested quite heavily in the technology for our gyms. When I first came into this we were looking at new gym equipment and of course you go with everybody's typical view of right we need some weight machines in a gym. Of course we need a treadmill and a bike and that kind of thing. We looked around and thought well what is the best equipment for more senior people because I don't know about you Dominic, but when I go to a gym, I have no idea what to do with that little pin and which way I am meant to put it in and how many times I am meant to do this, and I have too much of an ego to ask that young fit looking bloke over there what I should be doing, and so it is actually a little bit intimating unless you know what you are doing. Now put yourself in your parent's shoes and think how intimidating going into a gym and looking at that gym equipment would look for a 75 year old lady that has never been in a gym in her life, but wants to stay active and keep fit and so we partnered with a company called EGYM. Now with EGYM, our wellness navigators support them setting up the whole programme and then in the future you just walk up, tap your little wristband on the screen and it comes up with hi Tom and the seat is adjusted to your height and the weight adjusts to your programme, and all you have to do is pull down and push so that this little ball goes along the screen and follows the curve. Now that takes all of the intimidation out of it. It makes it easy. It makes it more social and what we found is that pre-COVID we had 50%25 usage by residents in the villages and the gym equipment and we saw a 35%25 increase in strength across all of the equipment, because it also does strength tests of a group of 30 residents that we can follow over a three month period and that was just phenomenal.

We also use this thing called a cardio wall, which is like a great big game of whack a mole but it goes along the wall and the lights come up and you have got to hit it. When we first introduced that or trialled it I remember a lady using it. She said oh I can't use that, I haven't done squats for years and our navigator coaxed her on to it, set up the programme right and she hit all of these things, she got not a bad score and the navigator in the end said you know you said you haven't done any squats, well you have just done 12 in a minute because you had to bend down to get those, you had to reach up again. This lady walked away and she came past and she said Tom, if you ever take that away I will hunt you down and I was like right well that is staying, we will be putting those in every village as we go forwards. Within the properties themselves I think there is a lot of opportunity, so smart homes are great and advancing all of the time and care tech is great but often used as a reactive installation and what I would like to see, whenever I am talking with different technology companies, is technology that is useful today but it will save your life tomorrow.

So the example I give is having sensors around the home is great, but nobody really wants the thought of I have got to have sensors because that is going to tell somebody how much I sit down and how much I'm in and out and all of this kind of thing, so if we could create sensors that linked to smart lighting systems that could tell when you have gone out and turn all the lights off for you so you save money, that would be an example of those sensors being useful today in my current life and I think there would be a fair few of us that would go I'll have a bit of that, save me on some energy bills. That's great, but if those sensors were also then feeding back with an algorithm telling you, telling us, telling families whether you are better today than you were yesterday because you have been sat down for longer or whether you've used the loo more often and therefore it is the sign of an infection, or whether you are just not using things as often around the home then it can start to flag that you may not be so well. If they notice that you have not been up and about all day, then they could send an alert so that is the kind of idea in my head that where we move from care tech to more life tech.

We are talking to people about voice activated units at the moment, so playing my music today but if I have fallen over and I shout for help, it recognises that and puts you straight through to the support lines 24 hours a day - how do you make that available, it feels like we are on the edge of that coming. We have got Echo Dots. We all know how they work and just tailoring that to link in with the support lines that we have in place I think is kind of the next big thing of where life tech meets care tech and it all integrates and feels like it is something you can have in your home today but it will save you if you fall over tomorrow.

Dominic Morris: It is fascinating prospect isn't it, and I guess you balance it at all times with the need for people to feel independence in the lives they are living and one person may be very happy to adapt and embrace that and others may be more reticent I guess.

Tom Lord: Yes you're right because we are not care homes, people are living independently as part of a community and so we do not want to be intrusive, we don't want to build every apartment, add to the cost of buying it because we have packed it with technology that they don't actually want. What's really key is creating an echo system through this hub that we talked about, through the tablets that we put into the properties and creating a great eco system where expert software providers can add to that eco system or can retrofit to it, so that if somebody did get to a point where they said I really like the idea of that new innovation, can we get it retrofitted into the property and linked into the hub so that it all works together seamlessly, we can do that. That for me is the answer and I don't think it is one tech company that can solve everything any more. I think it is about people working together and experts in different areas, so there will be an expert on motion detection, there will be an expert in the software to do the community life piece like I was talking about with Cubigo. There will be an expert in putting a weather monitor on the roof of the village that then links down and tells you exactly what it is like outside today. All of that coming together, the underfloor heating fitting into it, that kind of eco system I think is what will create really great outcomes for people in the future, especially in these situations where you are on the verge of moving from just being a smart home to being one that is proactively supporting you as you grow older.

Dominic Morris: I think that is really a great note to end on. From the operator's perspective you are completely invested in the life of your residents and in promoting the health and wellbeing and how they engage your facilities and use them, and that is the sort of retirement communities proposition in a nutshell isn't it?

Tom Lord: It is. I mean it's totally aligned with the challenge from the Government of five years of healthier life. We know and we have proved that through various studies, as has everybody else, that keeping active, keeping mentally, socially and physically active can keep you healthier for longer. We know that our communities can support people better and more proactively and be able to bring the right levels of care and support in at the right times as we go forwards. So it is almost a move to a retirement village's future proofing to keep you more active, combat loneliness as we go forwards and I mean on that it is just creating really great communities where people live independent lives and enjoy the best years of their lives longer - no need to be working, it is all about social activity, enjoying great hobbies, friendships, getting out and doing really what you have always wanted to do and what you enjoy doing and on that note, you'll like this one. We asked some of the residents of our villages in the last few months lockdown is coming down, what would you like to do, what is it that we call the bucket list but as we come out of it, what are you going to be ready to do to make the most of life now and so one resident, she is 82, has asked if she can jump out of a plane so she is going to doing a tandem skydive on 21 June. We have had another resident ask to drive a tank and if we could arrange that and one that has always wanted to do a hot air balloon ride. So there is a lot of life in our elders and I think there are just some great times ahead as these restrictions ease and people make the most of their lives and that is what we want to help them do.

Dominic Morris: I think that is a great note on which to end. So thank you very much for your time today.

Tom Lord: No problem Dominic. Thank you very much.