Resume
The NSE has a number of problems today. The major ones are:

• Rundown care homes
• Excessive care homes (in a dilapidated state)
• High historic overhead base
• Poor financial performance (and hence value) on its care home operation
• Green Belt restrictions
• Lack of capital availability

The NSE's £32M redevelopment proposal steamrollers through all of these problems to give a solution that (at first appearance at least) solves all the NSE’s internal problems. It has appalling consequences on the local community as detailed elsewhere on this Website. It also abuses normal democracy and the planning system. This is hardly a holistic solution. Many worthwhile buildings are razed and rebuilt elsewhere. The Green Belt would be ravaged. The NSE’s own residents would make some major gains but also suffer substantial harm.

Basic Scheme
sense believe there is a more moderate and reasonable approach that satisfies all key requirements (but not, as yet, the wish list) of the NSE's care residents and does minimum harm to anyone whether inside or outside the NSE’s boundaries.

The NSE’s residential care operation has decreased in recent years as far as numbers of residents is concerned. This is projected to continue in the medium term future. A few years ago there were 290 care residents on the Chalfont Common site and in a few more years the NSE say this will fall to 152. Along with the fall of 140 in the NSE’s residents, there will be a fall in the number of on-site staff required - perhaps by 20 or 30. Some of the Skippings Farm agricultural buildings are also to be demolished.  These buildings have now, in the main, fallen in into disrepair ought to be capable of being sold/rebuilt for other purposes. This could, for example, take the form of retirement bungalows, small retirement homes or perhaps a nursing home for the elderly. Almost certainly it would not be appropriate to build on the exact footprint of the existing dilapidated buildings. sense acknowledge a case for the new build to be elsewhere on the NSE’s existing developed site, provided that the overall footprint of buildings on Green Belt land did not increase.

In essence, the NSE would leverage the value of its already developed land (agricultural land in the Green Belt is worth around £2,500 per acre; from the NSE’s plans, it says it will receive £29.8M from developers for 22 acres, thus valuing it at £1,350,000 per acre). They would need to allow for building costs but would gain revenues on the aggregate of developed land + building costs.

In rough terms, the buildings footprint that formerly housed 160 people may translate into homes for 120 people today, or perhaps say 100 to be conservative. In practice, this could mean:

1 Renovate or rebuild as necessary the care homes for 140 residents on the existing building footprints. (Preferably at locations near to the NSE's central services.)

2 In parallel to the above, either:
(a) 'borrow and build', or
(b) sell/lease the land and/or buildings (or its relocated equivalent) vacated by the 140 care residents and (maybe 20) staff. (Preferably do so away from the NSE's central services.)

3 Build single storey retirement bungalows/homes which would fit in well physically and socially.

This has the following benefits:
i The Green Belt implications are relatively trivial.
ii There is minimal disruption on the site and its surroundings.
iii All services (gas, electricity, sewerage etc.) are already laid in.
iv The NSE has the option to retain ownership of all land.
v The usage is not that dissimilar to the use today.
vi There is no additional stress on the local infrastructure
vii The NSE’s care residents retain the benefit of a quiet, spacious rural environment.

Does it work financially?
As already noted, the proposed new housing estate would accommodate 726 people at a build cost of £20.5Million.  On the same basis the cost of building accommodation for the NSE's 140 (of the 152 long-term care residents involved, the completed Queen Elizabeth building renovation accommodates 12 people) care residents would be £20.5M x 140 / 726 = £3.95Million.  After fit-out costs and specialist equipment the cost would rise, perhaps to the order of £5Million. sense have quoted this in previous hand-outs and on this Website.

Elsewhere in the sense PoE and on this Website we have applied a higher build cost per square metre and greater floorspace per care resident to estimate a build cost of between £7-9Million.  Let's use the upper level of £9Million in considering the financial viability.

The space vacated by 140 residents plus associated staff should be enough to build 50 semi-detached bungalows for retired couples (i.e. some 100 people). This would require 25 separate buildings. BCIS figures (BCIS stands for 'Building Cost Information Service' and is the information service for the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors) for rebuild costs for South East England as at January 2004 were:
   Large semi-detached bungalow £75,504
   Small semi-detached bungalow £47,799
The average is £61,500. Total build cost for the 25 units is therefore 25 x 2 x £61.5K = £3.1M. Sales proceeds would be in the order of 50 x £250K = £12.5M. The net inflow of £9.4 million is sufficient to fund the complete redevelopment of the NSE residential care homes.

Furthermore, in line with the NSE's thinking, they don't have to put their hands in their pockets to contribute even a penny to fund this.

Scheme Alternatives
The above the scheme transfers title in the land to the purchasers of the new properties. The NSE may prefer to retain title and lease the properties built on either a short-term or long-term basis.

An alternative that generate less cash would be the building of a substantial residential care/nursing home (as the NSE already propose). This would have the benefit of catering for possible future expansion of their care home services - at present there is no slack in their operational plan. Theoretically, it would be best in this scenario for the NSE to build, manage and run such a care service themselves. This may prove financially challenging for them. An alternative is to grant the rights for such a scheme to an outside party to manage for a set period of time, e.g. 20 years, at which point ownership would revert to the NSE at an agreed sum.