Iain Lock
Managing Director Health, Avison Young (Chair)
Iain is a Chartered Surveyor of nearly 40 years’ experience and has specialised in the healthcare sector for the past 32 years. He is a past Director of Christie & Co and Savills and is now Managing Director of Health at Avison Young, one of the largest teams in the sector in the UK.
As an experienced advisor, agent and valuer Iain has been involved in significant transactions for clients including operators, developers, lenders and investors, covering trading business assets, investments and developments. He is an RICS Registered Valuer.
He has a particular interest in the retirement living with care markets and acts for many of the main participants in this growing sector. He provided a paper to the Law Commission in its review of Event Fees in the sector and during 2016 acted as an expert on the same subject in a High Court action.
Iain has acted for a wide range of clients on subject to planning and consented land and turnkey and trading asset deals in the care home, retirement village and extra care sectors.
His team covers the full spectrum of assets in the healthcare markets including elderly, specialist care, private hospitals, clinics and primary care. Avison Young is instructed on a very high proportion of public sector work across may government departments and with the Avison Young planning and strategic development teams the Health team is increasingly working on health as part of urban regeneration.
Iain acts as an Expert in the sector having taken expert appointments on in the region of 100 cases over 25 years with significant court experience as part of that undertaking.
Lauren Harwood
Head of Senior Living Research, Knight Frank
Lauren Harwood is Head of the Seniors Housing Consultancy team at global property consultancy Knight Frank. Working alongside the Capital Markets and Valuations functions, Lauren and the Consultancy team provide a full range of property services to leading developers, operators and funders working within the seniors housing sector. Lauren also plays a vital role in the delivery of various sector-specific research published by Knight Frank – most notably the Knight Frank Seniors Housing Annual Review.
Nick Sanderson
Chief Executive, Audley Retirement
Nick Sanderson is CEO of Audley Group the UK’s largest developer and operator of luxury retirement villages.
In the 1980’s with Dr Andrew MacDonald he founded, operated and then sold Beaumont Healthcare, one of the first corporate providers of private pay nursing care homes. In 1986, that company created close care housing which offered independent living to older people in their own homes adjacent to a Beaumont care home.
After 5 years of public/private partnerships, in the early nineties he created Audley to develop a portfolio of private retirement villages. Retirement villages offer independent living to older people in purchased homes with flexible care and support to allow them to stay in place throughout their life.
The first two award winning schemes in Tunbridge Wells and Harrogate were completed by 2004. In 2008 he formed a partnership with Moorfield Group.
Audley now has 21 schemes in its programme with nearly 2500 units with a GDV approaching £1bn. The company has over 2500 customers and over 850 staff.
Mayfield Villages was launched to provide the Audley offer at a more affordable price.
Audley, together with its largest investor PFA, launched Evia Living in 2020 to introduce Audley quality retirement villages to Denmark.
The Group is multi award winning.
Nick is a Chairman of the Association of Retirement Community Operators and a member of the Standards Committee.
He is a regular speaker at national and international conferences and a contributor to several publications. He has acted as an advisor to both the public and private sector.
Will Bax
Chief Executive, Retirement Villages Group
Will has a passion for building communities and helping them to realise their potential. He joined RVG in 2019 to pursue a new strategy of urban, socially connected, retirement living, rooted in purpose and place-making.
Prior to RVG, Will was an Executive Director at Grosvenor, where he was responsible for the London Estate. He is a Trustee of the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich and a Board and Steering Group member of ARCO (the Association of Retirement Community Operators).
Away from work Will is a keen sportsman, sailer and naturalist and is currently rewilding his home farm in Kent.
Penny Hughes
Chair, Riverstone
Penny is chair of Riverstone and has served on multiple boards, including the Body Shop, Gap and Aston Martin, as well as serving on the boards of Vodafone, Reuters and the Royal Bank of Scotland amongst others. After overseeing the merger of the bottling interests of Coca-Cola UK and Schweppes, she became President of Coca-Cola GB & Ireland at the age of 33. Penny was instrumental in the sale of iQ Student Accommodation in May 2020 for the largest ever private real estate transaction in the UK. In 2011 she received a CBE for services to the media in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List.
Henry Lumby
Chief Development Officer, Amicala
Henry was formerly Head of Retirement Living at Savills. In that role he advised many of the leading UK extra care, assisted living and retirement developers and operators, as well as advising investors and new entrants. Henry in addition advised think tanks, policy bodies and industry groups. Prior to this role Henry was Head of Sales for a retirement and care home developer / operator in Southern England. Over the course of his career in property since 2001, Henry has worked across the senior living sector. Amicala currently have their first two schemes (in Weybridge and Bristol) in planning.
Henry is a Director of Seniors Living Group and Executive Director of Amicala’s sister business Allegra Care, which operates care and nursing homes across the south in a JV with Moorfield.
Kieren Cole
Partner - Healthcare Valuation & Advisory, Knight Frank
A Chartered Surveyor since 2000, Kieren has experience in providing valuation and consultancy
services to lenders in the healthcare, retail and licensed/leisure market. Kieren is responsible for
commercial valuations across the healthcare sector, including care homes, independent
hospitals, close care/extra care developments and other healthcare properties.
Kieren provides both trading and investment valuations for secured lending and portfolio
valuations for major high street banks, private equity houses and corporate, charitable and
private operators. Other key areas include strategic advice to care home operators from private,
public and charitable sectors.
Kieren also has experience of preparing reports under Civil Procedure Rules and being
instructed in the capacity of Single Joint Expert, including reporting to Court for matrimonial
settlement purposes. He recently achieved RICS accredited Mediation status and is also a
trained RICS APC Assessor.
Helen Jones
CEO, Allegra Care
Helen is the CEO of Allegra Care, a seniors nursing home provider, with 8 homes in regional England.
Helen is also the COO of Amicala, a new start in the retirement communities sector.
Prior to moving to England in 2017, Helen held senior roles within the Australian care home and
retirement living industry as General Manager for TriCare Nursing Homes (1,200 residents), Chief
Operations Officer for Domain Principal Group (5,000 residents) and Executive for Strategy,
Standards and Service Development with Australian Unity Independent and Assisted Living (3,000
residents, 55,000 home care clients).
Helen holds tertiary qualifications in adult education, specialising in literacy and workplace capability
and health science management. Helen has completed several studies covering industrial relations,
psychology in business, standards implementation, and corporate governance.
Helen undertook global research to shape her award-winning residential care service model. Helen
was the first aged care recipient of the Endeavour Executive Australia Award, and is a past Board
member of the Common Age Association, a charitable organisation focused on improving aged care
standards in all Commonwealth countries.
Since arriving in the United Kingdom, Helen has established herself in the seniors living industry,
participating in think tanks and APPGs in the House of Lords, engaged with Care England and with
the National Care Forum, and formed collegiate relationships with leading care providers. In
addition, Helen has assessed the performance of over 170 care homes and undertaken site
inspections on more than 80 homes.
Helen considers it both a privilege and tremendous opportunity to be a participant in the seniors
living industry.
John Tonkiss
Chief Executive, McCarthy Stone
John Tonkiss became Chief Executive Officer for McCarthy Stone, the UK’s leading developer and manager of retirement communities, in September 2018, having previously been the Group’s Chief Operating Officer. He joined McCarthy Stone in February 2014.
Prior to joining McCarthy Stone, John worked for ten years at the Unite Group, the UK’s largest provider of purpose-built student accommodation, becoming Chief Operating Officer in 2008. While at Unite, John helped introduce new models of investment and construction for student housing that transformed the sector, including pioneering a full Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) approach. John is bringing this experience to the retirement communities sector with the launch in 2020 of McCarthy Stone’s national partnership with Sigmat, which will see 50% of the group’s future developments built using MMC.
John was also Chief Executive of Human Recognition Systems, the UK’s leading biometric solutions provider, between 2012 and 2014.
John is responsible for executing McCarthy Stone’s transformation strategy that was announced in September 2018, having helped formulate it while he was Chief Operating Officer. John’s long-term vision is to create even deeper and longer relationships with customers. The new strategy is based around providing a choice of ownership options including rental and affordable shared ownership, flexible services including the expansion of McCarthy Stone’s in-house care offering, and delivering affordable property prices to widen the number of people who can enjoy the benefits of retirement living.
The strategy is progressing well. In 2021, McCarthy Stone’s new shared ownership business was successful in its bid for c.£94m in grant funding from Homes England to deliver 1,500 new affordable shared ownership units, and McCarthy Stone also launched its new £200m deal with John Laing for the financing of its rental portfolio. In 2020, the Group also launched its development partnership with Anchor to deliver several new ‘affordable for all’ retirement villages in the UK.
Anna Kear
CEO, Tonic Housing
Anna is the CEO of Tonic Housing, who have recently opened the UK’s first LGBT+ affirming retirement community in central London. She is Co-Chair of HouseProud, the network group for LGBT+ people working in social housing, a member of the London Housing Panel and one of the founders of the London LGBTIQA+ Community Housing Coalition. Anna is a member of the new Inquiry of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Housing and Care for Older People on Shared Ownership for an Ageing Population.
Prior to joining Tonic, Anna was Executive Director of UK Cohousing and she helped to establish new community-led housing hubs across the country along with the government's Community Housing Fund enabling community groups to directly access development funding. Anna has been employed in the housing & property sector for over 30 years, working for housing associations, local authorities and developers.
Tom Hartley
Managing Director, Carterwood
As managing director, Tom is part of the senior leadership team responsible for running and growing the business, building long-lasting relationships with our clients, and raising Carterwood’s profile in the sector. Tom joined Carterwood in 2010 and is a qualified chartered surveyor with over 10 years’ experience in the social care sector.
Tom works closely with Carterwood’s clients to assist with commercial due diligence, obtaining planning permission, improving the performance of existing services, and setting future strategy for groups and portfolios.
Carterwood is revolutionising and challenging the norm, driven by core values to ‘do it right’ and ‘do it fast’ and a genuine passion for innovation.
Jonty Roots
Managing Director, boomer & beyond
Jonty has been a passionate exponent of brand, insight and creativity for over 20 years, working internationally across a broad range of disciplines.
Having led award-winning brand agency Pollitt & Partners for 12 years, Jonty launched Boomer & Beyond in 2017 - an agency dedicated to the burgeoning 55+ audience. Its mission is to challenge the pre-conceptions of ‘old’ by talking regularly and openly to its audience and feed its insights directly into the creative process. Its audience-led approach connects more effectively with consumers, driving greater ROI for its clients and relevance, empathy and stimulation for their customers.
He has worked extensively in the later living sector for clients including; Riverstone Living, Amicala, Birchgrove, Retirement Living and Churchill and recently helped launch Opus Complete Later Living, a new entrant to the market.
Anne-Marie Nicholson
Principal, Life3A
Anne-Marie is an architect with 25-years’ experience of designing and delivering schemes in the later-living sector. During her career, Anne-Marie has overseen the delivery of some 11,000 retirement apartments and care beds for older people, many of which have been recognised by award bodies, including the RIBA and Housing Design Awards. She has been a driving force for ‘good design’ since specialising in the sector at the start of her career. Anne-Marie is currently the Principal at Life3A architects in London; prior to that she was a Senior Partner at PRP having established, then lead, the later-living team for 23 years. Life3A are a global practice with studios that specialise in the later-living sector in Australia, New Zealand, Spain and Kuala Lumpa.
Jenny Buterchi
Partner, PRP
Jenny, an expert architect who has worked in the sector for over 20 years, leads the later living team at PRP. She has delivered award winning housing across tenures, specialising in designing for older people, as well as those with mental health and learning disabilities.
Her breadth of experience covers a range of typologies including intergenerational living, integrated retirement communities, retirement housing and care homes. She has also written and contributed to numerous publications and design guides, across the housing, health and wellbeing sectors.
Michael Voges
Executive Director, ARCO
Michael Voges is the Chief Executive of the Associated Retirement Community Operators (ARCO), the representative body for housing-with-care providers for older people in the UK. Michael set up ARCO on behalf of its founding members in 2012, and is a regular contributor to parliamentary inquiries, sector conferences and the press. ARCO’s work is focused on tackling issues around regulation and policy, self-regulation, public awareness and supply of high quality retirement communities. Prior to ARCO, Michael worked as a public sector consultant and as a journalist.
Kyle Holling
Partner, Trowers & Hamlins
Kyle co-heads our Health and Social Care Team. He is a projects lawyer with a real estate background, focused on the intersection between accommodation and health and social care provision.
Kyle has worked across a wide range of healthcare real estate based transactions involving investors, operators, the private and public sectors, from private hospitals to care homes to accommodation and other services and settings for working age people with disabilities. He also assists clients on contracting structures and models relating to service delivery, particularly in care home and domiciliary care settings.
Kyle is a leading authority and regular speaker and writer on retirement sector. He is the leading UK lawyer on "event fee" models and the regulatory regimes that underpin them and has contributed to many conferences and thought leadership pieces in this area. He is a contributor to the Urban Land Institute's good practice guide "Later Living: Housing with Care".
Kyle has a strong understanding of the Care Quality Commission regulatory regime which underpins the sector and uses that knowledge both to add value to transactional work and to provide training and advice to clients.
Philip Schmid
Senior Director – UK Senior Housing, CBRE
Phil is part of CBRE’s Operational Real Estate Team with over 17 years’ experience in advising on and transacting on operational assets. The last 10 years have been focussed on senior housing and elderly care transactions.
Phil specialises in funding options and development opportunities for the senior housing and elderly care markets. He has extensive experience disposing and acquiring elderly and senior housing led businesses and sites across the UK. More recently Phil acted on behalf of Birchgrove in the disposal of their first two 100% retirement rental schemes to M&G and brokered the deal with Activum and Opus in addition to forward funding care homes across England.
Honor Barratt
Managing Director, Birchgrove
Honor is the CEO of Birchgrove, a specialist age-exclusive developer working to establish a portfolio
of assisted living neighbourhoods with well thought-out facilities for rent.
Central to Birchgrove's proposition is the belief that renting instead of owning a home is the most
liberating form of tenure, allowing neighbours to retain their independence without the burden of
homeownership.
Birchgrove has a bunch of happy neighbours in Sidcup in Kent and two neighbourhoods in Woking
and Ewell, both in Surrey. Following closely behind are Banstead, Godalming, Leatherhead - all in
Surrey - and most recently Chiswick in London.
Honor is happiest in the company of older people and this has nothing to do with the amount of
Victoria Sandwich or good chat on offer.
Jeremy Richardson
Chief Executive, Runwood Homes
Jeremy joined Runwood Homes Senior Living, one of the UK's largest care home providers, in July as CEO. Runwood Homes has over 30 years of experience in providing expert residential, dementia, nursing and respite care, in over 70 sites across the UK. The Group operates its homes under three brands, Runwood Homes, Sanders Senior Living and Kathryn Homes.
Jeremy has a wealth of experience in leadership roles in social care and has previously held the role of CEO of brightkind, and later Chief Executive of the Four Seasons Health Care Group. Jeremy has acted as a strong voice for social care across Government and in the media over the past 24 months.
Prior to his career in social care, Jeremy held a number of senior positions in the hospitality and leisure sectors, notably as Executive Chairman at Menzies Hotels, and as a Director at Bourne Leisure, owner of Haven Holidays. Jeremy was also one of the two founders of Kew Green Hotels, which he took from start up to become one of Europe’s largest multi franchise hotel companies. Jeremy is a Non-Executive Director of the Goodwood Estate.
Shirley Hall
Head of Care & Wellbeing, Retirement Villages
Shirley has a background in nursing and moved into the retirement villages sector in July 2013 to oversee the wellbeing and dementia services at ExtraCare. Shirley completed the Older Person’s Fellowship with Kings College London in 2018, her Quality Improvement Project being to implement a frailty tool as part of ExtraCare’s new wellbeing app. She has also been responsible for all research and innovation as well as designing new services in her previous role. She joined Retirement Villages Group in October.
Paula Broadbent
Managing Director, Lovell Later Living
Paula brings over 30 years’ experience working with older and vulnerable people, developing thought leading partnerships and developing innovative products by engaging directly with customers. Leading on the delivery of largescale change projects in the public sector as well as large scale regeneration through public private partnership, her work in the later living sector has made her passionate about influencing the sector to do more of what matters to people in later life, driving inclusiveness through the effective development of multi-generational communities, creating opportunities for both older people and vulnerable people to live well and age well together.
Ed Warner
Founder & CEO, Motionspot
Ed Warner founded the accessible design company Motionspot in 2012 after his friend and Co-founder James Taylor was paralysed in a diving accident and became depressed by the clinical design and poor quality of adaptations in his home. Ed has built Motionspot into a RIBA award winning industry leader in accessible design helping to transform spaces and lives through beautifully designed, accessible environments that deliver independence for anyone with a disability.
In addition to designing improved access in hundreds of homes across the UK through their consumer brand Fine & Able, Motionspot has worked with clients and their architects to provide design advice and innovative accessible products to retirement developments, care and housing providers, hotels, offices, public spaces and leisure facilities across the world.
Ed also advises the Government as sector champion for the design of Accessible Spaces & Products.
Benjamin Davis
CEO, Octopus Real Estate
Benjamin joined Octopus in 2010. He is responsible for leading Octopus Real Estate, with £3.7bn funds under management across care homes, retirement living, affordable housing, and property lending spanning the development, commercial and residential sectors. He chairs the Octopus Real Estate Investment Committee, is part of the Octopus Group Executive Committee and is a member of the BPF Healthcare Committee. He previously led Octopus’ Intermediate Capital investment team (now part of Octopus Ventures). Prior to joining Octopus, Benjamin invested across a range of sectors at YFM Equity Partners and Interregnum. He has an MBA from the University of Cambridge and a Bachelor of Commerce (Hons) from the University of Auckland, New Zealand.
Sonia Parol
Design Director, Inspired Villages
Sonia designs and delivers high quality retirement villages across the country. Together with the Inspired Villages team, she is changing the perception of the later living sector through design and innovation and connecting with the residents. Sonia gained her experience in the sector working with the best later living operators in the UK as well as working on vertical villages in Sydney, Australia.
Ben Rosewall
Head of Investment – Later Living, Legal & General Capital
Ben is the Head of Investment for Legal & General Capital’s investment into Later Living. He responsible for all investment into the sector and oversees the long-term investment strategy as well sourcing new opportunities.
Ben has over 20 year’s experience in the housing sector with a career spanning the design, construction, advisory and investment sectors. He is currently a board member on the Inspired Villages JV, a £500m joint venture between Legal & General Capital and NatWest Pension Trust Limited, the defined benefit pension scheme of NatWest Group. The 15 year partnership aims to grow the portfolio to 5,100 homes to meet the fast growing need for specialist later living accommodation.
Before joining Legal & General, Ben spent 15 years with CBRE where he lead their senior housing business and represented leading investors, operators and lenders across the sector, both in UK and abroad.
James Halstead
Director, Blackrock
Responsible for equity deployment and investment performance across all real estate sectors. He has over 15 years of experience, most recently with BlackRock focussing on over £1.5bn of transactions in: BTR, Student Accommodation, Senior Living, Office, Hostels, and Last Mile Logistics. Previously James was a corporate real estate lawyer at BCLP and he holds an MBA from London Business School.