Following its successful first closing in July, the CarePlaces Fund, a partnership between Bridges Ventures and Castleoak, has completed its first round of acquisitions by acquiring three sites for care homes in Basingstoke, Tewkesbury and Uckfield with a combined development value of £25m.

The Basingstoke project has already completed with developments of the other sites to commence soon, providing a total of 177 rooms. Each of these properties will be leased to Barchester Healthcare Homes Ltd, one of the UKs leading care home operators with over 200 existing care sites, on 35 year FRI leases where rents will be indexed annually.

The CarePlaces Fund, so named to reflect its complete focus on the care sector, concentrates on first class care facilities for the elderly with a focus on sustainable design and construction.  Each home has a high proportion of private pay residents where demand is driven by a shortage of high quality accommodation in locations with attractive demographic profiles. The Fund’s focus is closely aligned with the overall mission of Bridges Ventures to use its commercial expertise to achieve social or environmental benefit, as well as attractive returns for investors.   In particular, it falls within its Health & Well-being and Environmental impact themes.

Simon Ringer, Managing Director of Bridges Ventures Property Funds commented:

“These initial investments are a strong start for the fund and terms have already been agreed to undertake a number of additional off market, pre let transactions with other established operators on similar long term leases. We are now holding discussions with other investors seeking to participate in this attractive market sector where we are able to deliver both capital profits from pre let developments and index linked cash flows.”

Mel Knight, CEO of Castleoak, commented:

“With these three developments and a strong pipeline of future acquisitions, the CarePlaces Fund aims to speed up the supply of high quality purpose built care homes to meet the growing demand for such accommodation.  Working with Bridges Ventures, we are confident of delivering long term and sustainable returns to our investors.”

– ENDS –

For further information please contact:

Claire Aslett Capital MSL 0207 307 5307 claire.aslett@capitalmsl.com

Notes to Editors

About Bridges Ventures

Bridges Ventures is a sustainable growth investor established in 2002 with a mission to use its commercial expertise to achieve focused social or environmental benefit, as well as attractive returns for investors. Bridges Ventures has raised five funds to date which total £187m: Venture Funds I & II, the Bridges Sustainable Property Fund, CarePlaces Partnership and the Bridges Social Entrepreneurs Fund.

The Bridges Venture Funds invest in growth businesses across the four impact themes of Underserved Areas, Education & Skills, Environment and Health & Well-being. The Funds typically invest up to £10m at a time in ambitious, entrepreneurial businesses including early stage, growth capital and buyouts / buy ins.

Since 2002, Bridges Venture Funds have made equity investments totalling over £70m in 34 businesses.

For more information please go to www.bridgesventures.com

About Castleoak

Established in 1984, Castleoak is one of the leading names in development, design and build within the care sector. The Group has built nothing but care accommodation since 1996, delivering over 150 care homes – including specialist dementia care facilities – and over 3000 apartments in extra care schemes and care villages across the country.

Castleoak offers complete turnkey solutions, from inception to furnishing and equipping, as well as a range of development services, including freehold sale, leasehold and joint ventures.

The Group works across the not-for-profit and commercial sectors, with many of the country’s leading high quality care providers. It also has considerable experience of strategic reprovisioning, having carried out rolling programmes over several years to replace outdated former local authority care facilities.  Current reprovision programmes include Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire.

The Group has won numerous industry awards for its work and was named Property Developer of the Year 2011 by Health Investor magazine earlier this year. It is an Investor in People and is an accredited one star company in The Sunday Times listings of the Best Small Companies to Work For. It has strong environmental credentials and has BS8555 and Green Dragon accreditation.

The Group enjoys strong working relationships with key sector bodies, including the National Care Forum and the English Community Care Association.