It’s curry night and service is in full swing. Baileys and bitter flow from the bar, kormas are ladled at tables, and laughter, complaints, and spills erupt through dentures. As I give a Nan a naan, a yell cuts through the noise; an older lady has fallen by the serving hatch and is unable to stand unassisted. “Would you give me a hand, sweetheart?”, she calmly asks, “Don’t touch her!” the bar manager snaps as I bend towards her. “You’re not allowed to touch her!” The woman blinks up at me, confused. “We have to call the care team — otherwise she could sue.” And so, for the next 45 minutes, she lies there, motionless but conscious and otherwise unhurt. “I won’t sue,” she promises, as staff avert their gaze, stepping over her to deliver Guinnesses, Pernods and chicken tikka masalas. Occasionally, she rolls onto one side. Eventually, she is hoisted to her feet, the official hoister having arrived on the scene.
Today, over 90,000 older people live in over 1,700 similar developments, where scenes like this play out all the time. They’re advertised in glossy (and subtly named?) magazines named Silver and Dignity, and their brochures often include salt-and-pepper bearded Adonises playing croquet, or else happy couples watching the sunset with a glass of wine. On-site dining is often offered — restaurants serving the British classics: sausage and mash, fish and chips, the ubiquitous curries — alongside shops, gyms, swimming pools and libraries. Every group is catered for. And, judging by the marketing, these villages look like the kind of place you might tell your children grandma went to play with the other grandmas, or even the perfect setting for a best-selling multimedia cosy crime series.
But the reality, as that lady’s fall in the cafeteria implies, is often very different. Residents face service charges averaging £524 a month, on top of ground rents that can exceed £500 a year. And if some fees are certain, others can bewilder both residents and their kids. While private organisations and charities often own these villages, after all, one provider sold 25% of its properties to the local council for use as social housing. The remaining 75% are privately purchased by residents. With no standardised model, understanding exactly what you’re signing up for can be hard. In some cases, responsibility for selling the property falls to the next of kin — with homes left on the market for months, often years. Research shows that around half are eventually sold at a loss, during which time families can still be liable for council tax, service charges and ground rent.
I got to know this grim reality firsthand. I used to work in one as a jobbing receptionist, translator, delivery-boy, diplomat, and often faux-grandson to the residents of the apartment complex of over 300 flats in the south-east of England. And now, I’m back, for the first time since leaving university. It’s the end of lunch and the café is quiet. Three ladies are in bejewelled finery as if on the Titanic; they sit and sigh and wait. They are, of course, all waiting for the inevitable as I realise when I enthusiastically approach someone I recognise. “How’s Harry?” I ask. “Dead.” “Helen?” “Dead.” “Lucy?” “In care.” “Pirate Paul?” (he wore an eye-patch and a cap with an anchor on it.) “Dead, I found him.” “Mary One?” “Alive.” “Mary Two?” “Nope.” “Bombay Jan?” “In the bar.” “Little John?” “Had a fall”. Either time is of the essence or there’s something in the custard.
The village tessellates out from a central plaza. The foyer is bright white, its hunched ceiling propped up by columns along the main thoroughfare. There are no windows, only a rectangular skylight along the roof — which, despite easing any ascension, gives me a feeling of already being six feet under. Vast new-build tiers stretch outward, lined with numbered doors and passageways that weave into the distance. I’m told the architects modelled the building on a cruise ship, though the interior feels closer to the Isle of Wight ferry. Along the main walkway, as promised in the brochure, there’s a little shop, gym, hairdresser, and woodwork room. To the right, an expansive bar and restaurant, where white tablecloths are decorated with neatly laid tables — though there was more life on the Mary Celeste.
I find the manager of another site — part of a national chain — in a side room typically reserved for “events” (wakes). He’s the same height as many residents, has a mop of brown hair, and wears a translucent white shirt. He’s quick to burst the bubble that, despite older people’s endearing appearance, retirement villages are a community like any other. “Half the residents here are nobs,” he tells me. “You can get any walk of life here. Some are looking for sheltered housing, others are escaping from domestic abuse, things like that.” There isn’t much of that here, he hastens to add, but in facilities with 300 apartments, there’s always a chance of copping a “wrong’un” as a neighbour.
Not that these risks put a dent in demand. As the manager says, there’s a 12-18 month waiting list for rentals, while sales can take up to a year. “But if you’re a cash buyer,” he adds, with a wry smile, “it puts you up to the top of the list.” It’s impossible, here, not to return to the question of money — for amid the ground rents and tax bills, many of these places are ultimately run as businesses. “Regardless of if you own it or rent it, it always comes back to us,” says the manager of a care home’s business model, explaining that for every year someone lives in the property, 1% of the original purchase price is taken off what the company will eventually buy it back from you (or your estate) for.
If, for example, you buy a flat for £100,000, then live in it for a decade, you’d see a return of just £90,000. That errant 10% is chalked up to maintenance and bills — and excludes a range of other fees — with the money passed back to your next of kin if you die. In practice, though, the economics can be even more brutal than these calculations imply. I meet one resident, a short man, with a flat cap smudged onto his head, who tells me his apartment was worth £170,000 when he entered into a shared ownership agreement with the council. Not only does he lose 1% of its value every year — plus additional fees — but “flats of that size are going for 400 grand now, which is a bit of a kick in the teeth, innit?”
That touches at a deeper issue that gnaws at this community: the buy-back price excludes any allowance for inflation. In other words, then, the man with the cap bought a share of a flat worth £170,000, and it may now be worth £400,000 on the open market — but when he dies, the company will buy back his share from his next of kin for less than he originally paid. No wonder he feels cheated out of the property’s increased value. Certainly, it’s a jarring contrast to how property works “on the outside” — as residents call it. But here, there’s no such thing as capital appreciation.
Defenders of the care home system would claim its benefits are supposedly quantifiable. One retirement village charity commissioned a team from Aston University to investigate the health outcomes for residents. Over their six-year study, the researchers reported a 38% reduction in NHS costs, a 64% drop in depression, a 75% increase in physical activity, with 86.5% of residents reporting they “never or hardly ever” felt lonely. It’s a sentiment echoed by the people I meet. Wally, with his neatly-combed grey hair, wears a chequered shirt and has saved me a seat among his circle. They’re sharing bottles of rosé in the foyer. Wally pours himself a glass, and they all guffaw as he dribbles some onto the faux-marble table. He has lived here for 12 years, and tells me “this is the best thing that could’ve happened to me” — especially given his wife has died and Wally himself faces a range of health issues. “If I’d have stayed in my house,” he adds, “I’d have had a very, very lonely life.”
That might be enough to make Richard Osman smile, but it’s hard to feel sentimental when I recall my own experiences: shepherding confused residents to the toilet; placing cones beside rogue deposits in the restaurant; mopping up suspicious puddles (custard, John Smiths, or other); nudging care teams about overstuffed stoma bags; and politely reminding people of where exactly they live.
Many in the community I visit feel unhappy with the village’s ageing demographics, even as they feel misled by the marketing. The snooker balls crack as I am beckoned by a coven of residents in a circle of armchairs in front of the bar. “If you want the dirt, come and sit with us,” Janet divulges. She slithers into a chair beside John, who wears a polo shirt, glasses, and a marbled moustache, which he marinates with a pint of bitter — immediately noting how it costs “five quid, even though we subsidise it”. They’re both in their late 60s. John moved in 13 years ago, after what he recounts as “18 months of persuasion” from his wife (not Janet). He describes recently coming downstairs into the hall and finding “it’s full of bloody old people!” While this can feel like complaining about sand in the desert, John argues that the place was marketed as a “thriving, active community”. Now, though, “it’s a miracle if you can get a couple coming in and one of them can walk”.
John and Janet are so indignant about the migration of elderly people to the village, I half expect them to roll out a “stop the scooters” banner. They conspiratorially discuss the procurement process in half-whispers. “Old people don’t live long, so [the company] gets a quick turnover,” John explains. “They’re moving the older people in to get the money, see?” They explain that, beyond the clear financial benefit of reselling the apartment to a new resident, departing owners, or their next of kin, are also charged exit fees. Some organisations demand as much as 35% of the property’s market value. Yet with the rising costs of nursing homes — the average monthly rate of residential care is currently £5,192 — John also claims that retirement villages are still cheaper: in the short term anyway.
Beneath the soft furnishings and glossy brochures, it’s anyway hard not to spot something rather cynical, with some residents beginning to sense that places like this aren’t built to care. They’re built, rather, to farm, with elderly residents harvested for their savings and extracted for maximum yield. That’s clear enough from all those costs and fees — but arguably, too, from the fact that many residents also volunteer. “We’re on reception, the bar, groups, facilities, all sorts,” Janet enthuses, with half her peers signed up to unpaid odd jobs. Yet if people like Janet surely find a sense of purpose in this work, it’s undoubtedly cheaper to employ fewer staff. As John angrily puts it: “It’s a money-saving scheme!”
“Elderly residents are harvested for their savings and extracted for maximum yield”
When I ask the manager about this, he chuckles. “We have a bit of a running joke with sales, and we say ‘oh that one can walk!’”. Despite the threshold being 55, he says “people moving in are more like 82-83”. But he pours cold water on the idea that there’s a conspiracy afoot. Rather, he blames the disparity of wealth between generations. Emerging as the wealthiest age group in the UK, Baby Boomers are simply more able to afford life in a village compared to their younger peers.
To be fair, volunteerism isn’t merely there to help the village’s bottom line. Jacqueline — in her 80s, with rosy cheeks and heavy makeup — proudly describes her work on the resident’s association. “We meet once a month,” she tells me, “and keep an eye on all sorts of things: the internal situation in regards to the building, the gardens being managed, and the fundraising initiatives.” Their latest victory comes after campaigning for 12 months to get a dedicated bus. “It’s a loop bus,” Wally declares, “it takes you in any direction: hospital, the shops, the garden centre, the pharmacy, you name it it goes there. It’s changed our lives, that bus. Without it, we’d be stuck.”
It’s evening now. The bar lights are dimmed and a sea of chairs face a mocked-up stage where a semi-professional singer croons. Couples, new-found and long-weathered, hold hands and sway like anchored boats on a gentle tide. Friends greet each other with hugs and remove handbags from reserved seats. Electric wheelchairs beep as they dock. A joyous squadron of women flaunt their mobility with line-dancing moves learnt in a community class. John joins me at the bar and we observe the scene. “It suits a lot of people down to the ground,” he defeatedly reflects. For those who have lost their loved ones, and who risk being isolated, you can’t put a price on community. But, for John, it “just hurts me to give them thousands of pounds for nothing”.
It strikes me that no matter the service charge, or the quality of the restaurant — which John chides as “more like a backstreet cafe” — or whether privately owned or council-housed, you may still end up defecating onto your shoe in the middle of a bistro. No amount of ground rent can protect your dignity when there is an intrinsic lack of it in ageing. That’s the part The Thursday Murder Club glosses over. You don’t see Pierce Brosnan shuffling down a hallway in stained joggers, unsure where he’s going. Helen Mirren isn’t seen denuded of dignity, lying on her back and promising she won’t sue.
Yet whichever way you look at it, this sordid future is exactly what’s waiting for more of us each year. The UK is facing a shortfall of over 487,000 homes for pensioners, with The Times reporting in 2022 that more than 3,000 retirement villages will be needed to meet demand. The Leasehold Reform Act 2024 promised to fix exploitative charges and ban leasehold sales on new homes — except retirement villages. As a society, we turn away from those in their last years, glamorise them in glib novels, perhaps because the truth about ageing is so hard to stomach. Looking an old person in the eye, as they lie on the floor, unable to stand, begging to be held, is too uncomfortable. So those who can afford it outsource the problem, outsource the care, and outsource their responsibility. Independent living schemes are here to stay, but without urgent reform, vulnerable older people will continue to be exploited, and that’s not a problem we should simply step over.
