Home/Care providers/Supported Living (Mental Health)
Care-sector property
Property for mental health supported living.
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.
Housing is the practical constraint on discharge from a mental health hospital. The clinical decision can be made and the person still cannot leave, because there is nowhere for them to live. That is a property problem sitting inside a health system, and it is why this sector buys buildings at all.
Who buys it
Who buys it — Supported Living (Mental Health)
After-care in this sector is not one buyer's job. It is a joint duty on the integrated care board and the local social services authority together, which means the money and the decision sit across an NHS body and a council rather than in either alone. A property offer that only reaches one of them has reached half the buyer.
Who is registered, and who is not
Who is registered, and who is not — Supported Living (Mental Health)
The same boundary applies here as across supported living: CQC registers the legal entity carrying on the regulated activity, not the building. Where the support is housing-related or social rather than personal care, no CQC registration is engaged at all. Carrying on a regulated activity without registration is an offence, which is precisely why the line between a landlord and a care provider is not one to blur in marketing.
How it is paid for
How it is paid for — Supported Living (Mental Health)
Capital in this sector is aimed squarely at discharge from hospital and at preventing readmission, and it is not reserved to one kind of organisation: it can reach a council, a housing association, a voluntary organisation or a private registered provider. The revenue side follows the usual split — housing costs to the landlord, care costs from the commissioner.
What the property has to be
What the property has to be — Supported Living (Mental Health)
What is wanted is ordinary housing that works for someone leaving a long hospital stay: self-contained where possible, in a location that supports rather than isolates, and available on a timescale that matches a discharge date rather than a development programme. Published examples of this sector working describe people moving out of long inpatient stays into housing, which is the outcome the buying is measured against.
What the lease looks like
What the lease looks like — Supported Living (Mental Health)
Lease shape here is less standardised than in learning disability supported living. It ranges from a provider taking a whole building to individual occupancy agreements with support brought in. There is no single market form, so the terms are genuinely negotiated.
What the building has to carry
What the building has to carry — Supported Living (Mental Health)
The building duties are the ordinary rented-sector set and they bind whoever controls the premises: fire risk assessment, annual gas safety checks, fixed wiring inspected at least every five years, alarms, and freedom from serious hazards. Where the building is shared by more than one household, HMO rules are engaged on top.
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.
Do you employ support workers?
No. We do not employ, supply or manage care or support staff, and we do not provide care, support or supervision. Those are the provider's, and the provider's registration covers them.
Which commissioner should we bring you into?
After-care duties in this sector are held jointly by the integrated care board and the local social services authority, so both are usually in the room. We would take the introduction wherever it is easiest for you to make it.
How quickly could a property be ready?
That depends entirely on the building and the works, and we will not put a number on it before we have seen one. Our service is designed to source and prepare property against a written specification; if you instruct us, we would give you a timetable for that specific property in writing.
Are you registered with CQC?
No, and we could not be. CQC registers the provider of the personal care. A landlord letting a house to a care provider is not carrying on that regulated activity and has nothing to register.