October 23 2004

The Medical Property Fund made a major commitment to a number of primary care development projects and LIFT schemes when it completed a £31m investment in the specialist healthcare developer, British Health Enterprise (BHE).

As well as acquiring a 70 per cent stake in BHE, the Medical Property Fund will provide at least £19.2m of funding to purchase BHE’s existing properties and fund current developments.

These include one of the UK’s largest primary care centres now being developed at Bonnyrigg in Edinburgh.

The Medical Property Fund also intends to provide a further £7m for BHE’s forward pipeline of primary care developments.

Commenting on the deal, Richard Burrell said: “This marks a further strategic investment by the Medical Property Fund in the renewal of the primary care estate which is suffering from lack of capacity and under investment.

We believe that the combination of BHE’s development expertise and MPF’s financial muscle will make a significant contribution to the regeneration of primary care services across the UK.”

BHE has major involvement, through its stake in the GB Consortium, in a number of LIFT projects and recently secured financial closure on major LIFT schemes in Liverpool and Sefton, and in Barnet, Enfield and Haringey. It is also the preferred bidder on the Coventry LIFT.

This story was also featured in the first issue of our Property Matters Newsletter. You may download a copy of this from the panel on the right hand side.