The Policy Context

1. Across the globe the trend towards living longer is creating multiple challenges, especially in developed countries. In the UK, the number of people aged 85 and over increased by 30 per cent between 2005 and 2014, alongside general increases in each age group over 60.

2. The challenges we all face are brought out in stark terms by the key NHS Providers document entitled 'Mission Impossible?'. This states that increased demand on the NHS is forecast to outstrip increases in funding by at least 100% even in this Financial Year. In response to these pressures, NHS England, in its five-year forward view, identifies a number of key strategic drivers, including:

a. Radical upgrade in prevention and public health is needed
b. Patients will gain a far greater control of their own care
c. Take decisive steps to break down the barriers to how care is provided
d. Developing new test-bed sites for worldwide innovators and new 'green field' sites where completely new NHS services will be designed from scratch

3. New policies and practice to embed these drivers has been slow in coming forward. The knock on effects of incremental progress for both the NHS and for Adult Social Care are already far reaching, with the Government struggling to find a sustainable funding model that delivers high quality care combined with clinical excellence. The Adult Care sector is now closer to market failure than ever before; preventable admissions, bed-blocking by older patients, and the difficulties associated with discharge of older patients are overburdening the NHS; while Primary Care is swamped by unconstrained demand. The continuing lack of integration of Health and Social Care in the UK is drawing both into a downward spiral of diminishing returns at an increasing cost. At a time when demand for health and social care is already outstripping supply, and with that gap expected to grow exponentially, policymakers, locally and nationally, are crying out for innovative approaches to the linked challenges of a broken social care market and the failures to make preventive healthcare a reality. A revolution in the care of the elderly is urgently needed to improve quality of life for all (including families and carers); and to reduce costs, not least by the judicial application of Assistive Technologies and Artificial Intelligence. But for this to happen, new transformative partnerships need to be forged by all stakeholders.

Colney Hall Estate

4. The Colney Hall estate (Colney Park) occupies approximately 29 hectares (83 acres including the Woodland Burial Ground) adjacent to the north western part of the Norwich Research Park. It is accessed by its own driveway from the Watton Road. It is bounded to the West partly by the River Yare and partly by adjoining parkland, to the North by the River Yare, to the East by the River Yare and adjoining farmland and to the South by the Watton Road. The site presents an attractive diversity of topography, landscape and habitat.

Surrounding Uses

5. Colney Hall could become a natural extension of the Norwich Research Park to the northern side of Watton Road. Adjacent to the core area of Colney Hall, the old stable site (approx. one acre) is currently being used and occupied by the Global Clinic, with the immediate availability of clinical care. An outdoor focused Montessori school operates within the Victorian walled garden, part of the old hall.

The Proposal - an older living community combining world leading research & technology to extend and improve independent living for all

6. We are working towards development of the Colney Estate to provide older people with a new and wonderful community to live in, to visit, and above all to participate in, thereby benefitting from the leading edge technological support, world class research, preventive approaches to healthy living, and a holistic approach to promoting well-being. Our aim is to provide a transformative design for living that will meet many of the challenges presented by ageing populations, as well as being replicable across the country, and beyond. The emphasis will be on supporting people in many ways to live better, for longer, and with greater Quality of Life, in their own homes. But the site will also provide facilities for institutional care (including for people not residing on the estate), as well as guest accommodation for those visiting friends and relatives living on site, or seeking respite from home care.

7. The community will include apartment accommodation, some specialist accommodation for visitors, training and community facilities and amenities to support a lively community. In addition, there might well be some limited research and data facilities to provide on-site support and advice and data handling. All of this will be based within a picturesque and carefully-managed ecological setting which will provide a backdrop to this fantastic community experience.

8. The key elements of the concept are:

- A better place to live in later life; a minimum of two hundred and fifty units of leasehold residential apartment accommodation for retirees. Each unit would incorporate bespoke Assistive Technology (AT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Each unit would be built in such a way as to be adaptable to (almost) all future changes in circumstances, both physical and cognitive.

- A unique opportunity to live independently while benefitting from the latest health-related research: Residents will be given the opportunity to participate in health research utilising extensive data collection technologies. These would include monitoring of facility and project involvement and usage, combined with health records and individual monitoring. The latter would be achieved through a combination of wearable technologies, ambient AT and AI, and conventional health checks. Combined with a range of wellbeing and personal enhancement facilities, research enrolees will enjoy a highly-personalised level of medical assessment.

- The Promise of A Healthier Life(style): Within the community, the availability of specialist services and the unique support of a truly personalised medical opinion will be standard. Optimal lifestyle choices could be advised. Conditions and disease are much more likely to be diagnosed at an early stage, providing the opportunity for more successful, and cheaper, treatment. Understanding of risk factors will mean a reduction in complications and secondary incidents. Put simply, retirees will come to Colney to live their later life to the full.

- A New Paradigm for Community Living for Residents and Their Friends and Family: The estate is intended to pioneer a new approach to community living in later life. The entire ethos will be one of happy, healthy, active and fulfilling independent living within a responsive, caring community. The layout of the parkland, with plenty of accessible pathways in a sylvan setting will set the tone. There will be guest accommodation (in lodges at the edge of the woods). There will be a community hub, a shop, a café/restaurant/meals provider, and a range of recreational spaces designed with well-being in mind (allotments, sheds, yurts for yoga and the arts, exercise facilities etc). Cars will be restricted to the outer perimeter, with a limited number of slow electric vehicles for deliveries, shuttles, waste etc using internal roadways.

- The best of care: the community would include a state of the art care facility, with sufficient capacity for those residents who (eventually) can no longer live independently. Demand for places will be low at first (and hopefully for the foreseeable future), and excess capacity at the facility will provide much needed high quality (temporary) places for non-residents.

- Dignity and Comfort at the End of Life: The community will also have an end of life facility on site, built and run to the same high standards that will be set across the estate.

- Pioneering in a Sector in Desperate Need of Transformation: UEA's role in this exemplar project will play to its strengths in research, teaching, training and employability. Opportunities for placements in health and other services will multiply, as will employment opportunities. But the real benefit, beyond those to the residents and their loved ones, will come from the beacon effect in the sector locally, regionally and nationally.

Planning history

9. The Colney Estate was once designated as employment allocation in the previous South Norfolk Local Plan as part of the Norwich Research Park. It was then de-allocated in the most recent Joint Core Strategy.

10. A planning application was submitted for part of the estate under Ref: 2011/0581 for a health care campus with associated research and development activities. The application was refused on the grounds it did not "comply with the intent of the Joint Core Strategy for Broadland, Norwich and South Norfolk Policy 9 which directs that land allocated for the expansion of the Norwich Research Park should be developed to secure knowledge driven, creative or high technology industries."

Partnership with University of East Anglia

11. Since an earlier planning application was refused, the estate has been actively seeking a fresh way forward. Since 2016, we have been in discussions with the University of East Anglia with a view to creating a concept that goes a long way to meeting many of the demographic and resource challenges we now face locally, nationally, and indeed internationally. Those conversations, still ongoing, have come a long way in that time, to the point where the Estate, in partnership with UEA, is now consulting with key stakeholders locally and nationally, to elaborate the optimum operating concept, and to scope out potential partners to deliver the project. The outcome of those consultations over the coming weeks and months will be a key factor in final decision-making at UEA. If UEA were to decide to commit to the project as the academic partner, we envisage that a collaborative bid for outline planning permission would shortly follow.

Suitability

12. The extension to the Norwich Research Park incorporating historic Colney Hall, together with the existing clinic uses within the estate, would present an opportunity to build upon the internationally renowned research centres at the NRP and underpin the international presence of Norwich as a centre of excellence in providing research and training particularly in plant, food, health, environmental and climate sciences.

13. The design would involve world leading concepts and be led by partners of UEA, such as IBM and other major international players, integrating the best technology and research facility to a high environmental standard, blending into the existing natural environment.

14. The designs will fully respect the historic environment and natural environment to create a facility that the elderly community and visitors can benefit from.

15. Access to the Estate is via a feeder road from the Watton Road. The County Council is currently upgrading the Watton Road. The development of Colney Hall would create additional mostly off-peak traffic.

Viability

16. As outlined above, the Estate, in consultation with UEA, is in discussions about how the community should be funded if a decision to proceed to planning permission is forthcoming. There are a number of options for doing this; the most obvious would be to use the sale of the residential units in a first phase to fund subsequent phases of development and research (the latter perhaps by way of an endowment created by the first phase of development).

Availability

17. The estate includes two freeholders within the site, both of which offer possibilities to enhance the offer of the community. The first of the freeholders is the Global Clinic, which owns just over an acre. Quite aside from the benefits in terms of immediate access to clinical care, also has a MRI scanner in situ (and about to be upgraded). The second freeholder is the Montessori School, which opened August 2017. They are fully supportive of the concept, and the potential for cross-generational events and activities could be a strong positive, given recent research as to the mutual benefits of this.

18. The proposed site is available now for immediate development with no ownership issues.

The Timeline/phasing

19. Upon gaining support from the Council, we will be submitting planning as soon as possible. The construction will be split into two phases:

First Phase Build - Accommodation at the front end of the site, the hub and some facilities will be part of this first phase build;

Second Phase Build - Care and End of Life Facilities, remainder of guest lodges.