McStone offers government 300 apartments to help crisis

McCarthy & Stone has offered more than 300 newly completed apartments in unoccupied developments to help government and local authority care providers address the acute shortage of beds for older people during the coronavirus crisis. The firm says these apartments can be used to house older people as they recover from COVID-19, or to house NHS keyworkers.

At the same time the firm announced that all members of the board and wider leadership team are taking a voluntary 20% reduction in basic salary from April 1 until further notice.

The moves come on the day of the firm’s AGM as it announces cash saving measures including pausing building activity on all sites, except certain sites close to completion, and stopping land spend. All marketing activity has been paused.

The firm said that employees impacted by the above actions will either be redeployed to support home owners or will qualify for support under the new government Job Retention Scheme.

McStone says that these cash measures will result in a saving of £230 million and will ensure that the business would be able to operate with no sales revenue for a period of about two and a half years.

John Tonkiss, ceo of McCarthy and …