Home/Care providers/Supported Living (Learning Disability & Autism)
Care-sector property
Property for supported living: learning disability and autism.
Maine Property Solutions is a property company. We find, prepare and manage buildings — we do not provide care, support or supervision, and we are not registered with CQC or Ofsted. Care and support in any property we manage is provided by the registered provider, not by us.
We are looking for our first placement in this sector. Tell us the specification and we will look for it.
Supported living is housing let to the person, with their care bought separately by the council. The building and the care are two contracts with two payers, and that separation is the whole point of the model — it is what lets someone change care provider without losing their home.
Who buys it
Who buys it — Supported Living (Learning Disability & Autism)
The buyer of the care is adult social care at the local authority, which carries the statutory duty to meet an eligible adult's care and support needs. Accommodation in premises other than a care home is a recognised statutory way of meeting them, and that is the hook this whole sector hangs from. Increasingly the council is not alone at the table: NHS commissioners, adult social care and the local housing authority are expected to develop this housing jointly, so a property conversation can start in any of three places.
Who is registered, and who is not
Who is registered, and who is not — Supported Living (Learning Disability & Autism)
CQC registers the organisation carrying on the regulated activity, not the location and not the freeholder. Personal care delivered where someone already lives is the regulated activity; the house itself is the resident's private address and is expressly not a CQC location. The practical test is whether the resident could change care provider and stay put. If they could, the accommodation and the care are genuinely separate — and the landlord is a landlord.
How it is paid for
How it is paid for — Supported Living (Learning Disability & Autism)
Two payers, never one. The tenant's housing benefit meets the rent and eligible service charges to the landlord; the local authority meets the cost of the care package. Housing costs in this part of the market run through Housing Benefit rather than the Universal Credit housing element, and the council decides whether a scheme meets the definition that unlocks it.
What the property has to be
What the property has to be — Supported Living (Learning Disability & Autism)
Property here is designed or adapted so that independent living is a real alternative to a care home. The schemes that work are small, ideally on the ground floor — single-person homes, converted bungalows and small multi-person schemes rather than institutions. And the buying pattern is unusual: property is very often sourced against a named individual with a known need, not bought speculatively and marketed afterwards.
What the lease looks like
What the lease looks like — Supported Living (Learning Disability & Autism)
The lease shape in this sector is long and hard. Twenty years or more is common, usually with no break clause and on full repairing and insuring terms, with the provider tenant absorbing void and re-let risk rather than the freeholder. That shape has drawn regulatory criticism over concentration risk and whether the rents underneath it are assured — which is a reason to read a proposed lease carefully rather than to celebrate its length.
What the building has to carry
What the building has to carry — Supported Living (Learning Disability & Autism)
Ordinary landlord duties attach to the building and none of them are softened by the presence of care: a fire risk assessment by whoever controls the premises, gas appliances checked at intervals of no more than twelve months, fixed electrical installations inspected at least every five years, smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, furniture meeting the fire safety regulations, and freedom from serious hazards under the housing health and safety rating system.
Honest limits
What is not possible here
We can never be the exempt-accommodation provider
Exempt accommodation — the housing benefit category that carries this part of the market — must be provided by a county council, a housing association, a registered charity or a voluntary organisation. Maine Property Solutions is a private limited company and is none of those, so we can never hold that status. What we can do is let a building TO an organisation that does. Anyone implying otherwise, including us, would be wrong.
Being exempt accommodation does not exempt you from HMO licensing
The word exempt in exempt accommodation refers to housing benefit, not to licensing, and the two are routinely confused. Being exempt accommodation does not exempt a building from HMO licensing. Mandatory licensing is triggered by five or more people in two or more households; what kind of occupancy agreement people hold makes no difference to whether a building is an HMO; and the single care setting that regulations lift out of the HMO definition is a registered care home, which is not what any of this is. Additional and selective licensing schemes can catch a property below the mandatory threshold as well.
The line, drawn plainly
What we can do, and what we cannot
What we can do
- Find property against a written specification — size, layout, location, adaptation, tenure and the compliance set the building has to carry.
- Prepare it: works, furnishing, certificates and the paperwork a provider or a commissioner will want to see before it takes the building on.
- Manage the building afterwards, if that is what is wanted — repairs, contractors, certificate renewals and the landlord side of the relationship.
- Put the proposed terms, the works and the timetable in front of you in writing before anything is committed.
What we do not do
- We do not provide care, support or supervision, of any kind, to anyone.
- We are not registered with CQC and we are not registered with Ofsted. A landlord letting a building to a care provider is carrying on neither regulated activity and has nothing to register.
- We do not employ, supply or manage care or support staff, and we make no claim about the vetting of anyone else's.
- We hold no framework place, no contract and no position on any supplier list with any council, health body or government department.
- We hold no care-sector placement anywhere. Maine Property Solutions operates two properties, both in Coventry, and has no managed instruction in any sector.
The rest of the lane
Other care sectors we can source property for
Your Questions
Questions we get asked
Not covered here? Tell us the specification and we will answer for your situation.
Would Maine Property Solutions be the care provider?
No. We do not provide care, support or supervision and we are not registered with CQC. We would be the landlord or the manager of the building. The care is delivered by the registered provider under its own contract with the commissioner and its own registration.
Have you done this before?
We are looking for our first placement in this sector. We operate two properties, both in Coventry, and we hold no care-sector instruction anywhere. We would rather say that than imply a track record we do not have.
Who holds the tenancy — the resident or the provider?
Both structures exist and they are not equivalent. Where the resident holds their own occupancy agreement, the accommodation and the care are separate and the resident can change provider without moving. Where a provider takes a lease of the whole building, the provider is our tenant. Which one is right is a question for you and your commissioner, and we would follow it, not set it.
Can you commit to a twenty-year lease?
That is a conversation, not a yes or a no. Long full repairing and insuring terms with no break are normal in this sector and the risk in them is real on both sides. If you instruct us, we would put the proposed terms in front of you in writing before anything is signed.