Specialist senior living developer Churchill Living has bought seven sites across the UK where it will build schemes with a gross development value of £125M.

Churchill, which builds senior living communities and sells individual units, said the investment comes amid a continued undersupply of specialist homes for older people in the UK.

The new sites are in Cirencester in Gloucestershire, Kingswinford in West Midlands, Meanwood in West Yorkshire, Rustington in West Sussex, Salisbury in Wiltshire, Seaford in East Sussex and Welling in Kent.

Churchill was founded by the McCarthy family, also one of the co-founders of retirement housing developer McCarthy & Stone, which was bought by private equity firm Lone Star for £647M in late 2020.

The company has built or is on-site with 200 developments across the country, all located on brownfield locations of between 0.4 and 2.5 acres.

Churchill said the building of more specialist senior housing is part of the solution to the UK’s housing crisis: If older people move out of family homes into specialist accommodation, that frees up larger homes for families.

In the year to June 2023, Churchill sold 431 units at an average price of £369K. That compares with 543 sales at an average price of £349K in 2022.

Those 2023 sales produced revenue of £174M and pretax profit of £17.8M. The company has £338M in completed and under-development units and total debt of £127M.