Firm running major Wigan retirement village appoints new MD to run its Northern division

Mr Aldridge joins from supermarket operator Aldi, where he had been national property director since 2016. He was responsible for coordinating Aldi’s property strategy and for expanding the business, which now has over 1,150 stores through the UK and Ireland. He was at Aldi for a total of 16 years.

Mr Aldridge joined McCarthy Stone, which built and runs Brideoake Court on the former Chadwick’s Emporium site in Standish, last month and is responsible for running its Northern division that is currently selling across 28 developments. The division also has 11 retirement communities under construction and its land team is looking to buy at least 12 new sites per year.

He will manage the division’s land and construction budget which will total around £250m over the next three years.

John Tonkiss, chief executive of McCarthy Stone, said: “I’m delighted to welcome Ciaran to the business. He has superb knowledge and experience of the development world given his time at Aldi and will be integral to helping us open new high-quality and affordable retirement communities across the north”.

Mr Aldridge said: “Our ageing population means we need to provide more and better housing options for those in later life so I’m hugely excited about joining McCarthy Stone. I will use my extensive experience of the land market to help more older people enjoy the many benefits of living in a retirement community.”

Mr Aldridge will also be responsible for rolling out McCarthy Stone’s new multi tenure and affordability strategy in the north that is helping older homeowners with lower equity levels buy a retirement property.

This strategy is centred around providing private rental options as well as a new affordable shared ownership tenure, where customers can purchase up to 75 per cent of a retirement apartment.

McCarthy Stone is also constructing a significant proportion of its future sites with Modern Methods of Construction (MMC), helping it to build faster, greener and more affordably than before. Its first 100 per cent MMC development opened in Hexham in Northumbria in 2021.

McCarthy Stone is currently selling across100 developments in England and Wales and sold or rented 1,210 new properties in FY22. Across the last decade it has been responsible for more than half of all retirement communities opened in the UK and is the only housebuilder to have received the HBF Five Star award for customer service every year it has been run.