OakNorth Bank provides £9.4m to national care group for new acquisition

Business lender OakNorth Bank has provided a £9.4m loan to a national care home operator for the acquisition of a new facility.

The bank has provided the funding to Care Concern Group to support its acquisition of Willowbrook Care Home in Birmingham.

Care Concern Group, which has over 80 sites across the country, hopes that the acquisition of the home will meet an existing shortfall for beds in the area.

This is the latest finance that the group has secured from OakNorth Bank, having borrowed around £40m to date from the lender.

Deepesh Thakrar, senior director of debt finance at OakNorth Bank, commented: “The West Midlands’ supply of care homes is lower than most other regions in the UK which is why it experiences such high average occupancy rates.

“This deal represented the opportunity to once again support a brilliant business and management team who have been able to build a portfolio of over 80 sites with an average of 87 per cent occupancy across them.

“This is a sector we understand and are keen to support more deals in, so it’s great to have a returning customer in the Care Concern Group.”

Manpreet Johal, CEO of Care Concern Group, added: “We’re excited to work with Deepesh and the rest of the OakNorth team for a second time this year.

“They have once again been incredibly supportive, working closely with Alpha Real Capital to ensure we were able to take advantage of this exciting opportunity to acquire a leading care home in Birmingham.”