The U.K. healthcare sector has seen stifled supply growth in care-home beds in the past year despite ever-increasing demand, with data from Knight Frank revealing that U.K. care-home supply has grown by only 6 percent in the last decade, while the United Kingdom’s over-65 population has increased by 22 percent over the same period.
Knight Frank’s annual UK Healthcare Development Opportunities 2021 research report showed that total care-home beds across the United Kingdom grew by 0.1 percent in the past year to 480,072 across 12,034 care homes. This is largely attributable to developers pausing operations to deal with the impacts of the pandemic.
The limited growth in new stock, far outstripped by the growth in the over-65 population, is coupled with concerns around the quality of existing units. Older care homes are often converted from other use and many fail to provide adequate facilities for elderly residents. 29 percent of existing beds lack en-suite
