Birchgrove, the UK’s leading provider of rented retirement homes, has celebrated its latest construction milestone with the topping out of Hampton Court Estate, a new 78-unit development close to Hampton Court Palace.

The ceremony was attended by a number of potential residents as well as Birchgrove CEO Honor Barratt, who inserted a ceremonial roof tile to mark the conclusion of the project’s construction.

Hampton Court Estate will offer contemporary, self-contained assisted living one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments available to independently minded renters aged over 65, together with extensive communal facilities including a restaurant, club room, licensed bar, wellness suite, library and landscaped gardens.

Research commissioned by Birchgrove shows that the project will deliver 107 bedrooms and help free up a further 179 bedrooms of family housing in the local area; as a result, a net increase of 72 bedrooms could be released onto the private market by using this site for assisted living, thereby helping address the local housing shortage.

Having launched its first community in 2019, Birchgrove currently operates four rented communities in the South-East, with a further community in Godalming, Surrey set to open later this year. Hampton Court Estate will be the sixth Birchgrove community to open, and the second in London after Mill Hill, when it opens in 2025, with a further three communities currently under construction.

The development of Birchgrove’s portfolio comes amid a chronic shortage of high-quality retirement properties for the over-65s in the South-East, and surging demand for senior living rented accommodation: according to the English Housing Survey, the number of pensioners in rented accommodation is set to double to over 1m in the next decade.

Honor Barratt, Chief Executive, Birchgrove said:

“I’m immensely proud to have topped out our sixth baby. We only delivered our first in 2019, so to be scaling at this rate is both a testament to the Birchgrove team and our backers and a clear indicator of surging market demand for high quality senior living rented accommodation. We’re so excited to be launching Hampton Court Estate in 2025 – the local oldies won’t know what hit them.”