The Perth City Medical Centre extends to 1020m² over two floors with 15 clinical rooms on the ground floor and staff and administration functions on the first floor.
The GP Practice’s Needs
With some of the GP’s looking to retirement, they were presented with the challenge of how to sell their individual equity stake in the property and how to find new GP recruits. It could be inhibitive and a disincentive to recruitment if a new incoming GP partner required to purchase a stake in the property asset. Added to this, the process of valuations, surveys, conveyancing and raising capital is costly and time consuming.
Apart from being a distraction to their day job as GP’s, it can be a stressful and fractious process, especially if there are differences of opinions about the condition and value of the property.
MCS’s Approach
MCS inspected the property and listened to the needs of the GP practice. As a result, we proposed to purchase the property and lease it back to the GP practice followed by a refurbishment to bring the property back up to current clinical standards.
This would enable all the asset owning partners to release their equity in return for a long lease to the GP partners.
Due to the relatively simple and inexpensive process of assigning responsibilities under the lease to new incoming partners, this would give the GPs flexibility when retiring or moving on in the future.
It was important for the sale and leaseback agreement to include for refurbishment to avoid any obsolescence and building deterioration from being locked into the lease term.
MCS Solution
MCS implemented a comprehensive refurbishment of the buildings clinical space, as well as replacement of key energy elements such as boilers and lighting. This together with an external maintenance, repair and clean up has refreshed the building which is now fit for the next 20 years.
MCS appointed Douglas Garden of Ryden who ably led the design and refurbishment contract, which was very well implemented by Pert Bruce Construction from Montrose.
The project required Pert Bruce to navigate a phased programme of access around Covid 19 restrictions in a working medical centre, which they did admirably well, enabling the Practice to be ready and approved to contribute to the vaccination roll out programme.
MCS now holds over half a million square feet of healthcare premises in around 40 locations in Scotland from Stranraer to Aberdeen and remain committed to investing in this sector as one of the leading providers of high-quality premises to healthcare professionals.
