Northcare to open Glasgow home using £5m funding

The East Kilbride-based firm is expected to open its first site in the city later this year, with beds for frail residents and people with dementia.

Northcare’s home in Glasgow will be its first to include a beauty room, chicken runs, a gym and vegetable patches as the family-run company aims to provide more activities for its elderly residents.

The 72-bed site at Cathcart will join the firm’s existing operations, which consist of a facility in Blantyre and two homes in East Kilbride.

Opening the site will take the firm’s headcount from 300 to about 380.

Margaret Sawers, a director at Northcare, said: “This is an incredibly exciting time for our business. Work on the new home is already under way, with completion planned for May.”

As well as funding the business, RBS commercial banking healthcare director Stuart Frame helped out at Northcare’s homes as part of the lender’s “Working With You” programme, which aims to help staff to think more like businesspeople than bankers.

Sawers added: “We very much appreciated Stuart spending time with us, which gave him a more detailed understanding of our business.”

Frame said: “Margaret and the team have shown great ambition and vision to build Northcare into the success it is, and we were delighted to provide the required funding.”

News of the funding boost for Northcare comes as industry veteran Robert Kilgour continues to build his latest venture, Renaissance.

Kilgour, who grew his Four Seasons Health Care group into a chain with more than 100 homes across the UK before he stepped down in 1999, recently bought four properties from the collapsed care home operator Southern Cross.

The four homes – three in the North-east and one in Edinburgh – add to Renaissance’s five existing sites in Edinburgh and East Lothian. He aims to reach 20 homes by 2015.