New care home in Banbury back on track

Company news

Feb 23, 2016

Work has restarted on building a beautiful new care home in Banbury, after a delay caused by the original construction company that was responsible for building the home going into administration last summer.

Care UK, which will own and operate the new care home, has appointed specialist developer Castleoak as the new construction company. The home is expected to be ready to accept its first residents in the summer of next year.

Castleoak designs and builds high quality care homes for many of the country’s care providers. It has already built a number of new homes for Care UK, including 10 in Suffolk. Castleoak has been established for 30 years and its team has built over 200 care homes and 3,000 apartments in extra care schemes and care villages across the UK.

The new care home will offer nursing and specialist dementia care for up to 73 residents over three storeys. It will feature a coffee shop in the reception area for residents and their visitors to enjoy as well as a beauty salon, cinema and landscaped gardens. All bedrooms will be en-suite and grouped around shared lounges and dining rooms to create a homely feel.

Over the past few weeks, the new builders have started to take down part of the structure put up by the first contractor.  Once this is complete, they will start to build the new home from scratch to very high specifications set out in the original planning documents.

Gary Renton, construction project manager for Care UK, said: “Losing our builders last summer was a real blow and it’s been very frustrating having to wait for that process to resolve itself before we could re-start work here at North Bar Place. However, we’re back on site and, fingers crossed, good weather will allow the home to be built in just over 12 months.”

Care UK and Castleoak are keen to make sure that they are good neighbours and have registered the Banbury site with UK-wide Considerate Constructors Scheme. This means it will be regularly inspected by an experienced, independent industry professional to assess consideration towards areas including the local community, environment and workforce.

Once complete, the new home will create around 100 new jobs for carers, nurses, caterers and housekeepers. Recruitment for these will start early in 2017, when they’ll be advertised on the Care UK careers website.