For supported accommodation providers
The house, found to your brief.
Prime Orchard Residential finds licensed houses in multiple occupation that meet your brief and leases the whole of each one to you. You place the young people, provide the support and stand as their landlord. The company deals with no occupier at any point.
What the company is
A landlord, and nothing else. Prime Orchard Residential is not registered with Ofsted, does not hold exempt accommodation status, and is not a registered provider of social housing. It does not need to be any of those to let you a building, and it does not pretend otherwise.
Two published procurements describe the arrangement directly. Cheshire East states that where a provider is not a registered social landlord, it can partner with a registered provider landlord on a collaborative application. Herefordshire accepts, as an alternative to a provider holding its own properties, evidence of an enforceable agreement with property owners to use suitable accommodation for the full duration of the contract. This is that agreement.
What arrives
A licensed house, checked before it is offered to you.
- Licence
- Already licensed as a house in multiple occupation, or licensed before, with the licence document seen and the reference and the council recorded.
- Planning
- The planning position checked against the council's own records before anything is committed. Where an Article 4 direction applies, that means establishing when the house in multiple occupation use began, because a licence is evidence towards lawful use rather than proof of it. Where the position cannot be established, you are told so rather than told it is settled.
- Layout
- A kitchen big enough to take a dining table for everyone, a living room as well as that, a staff room by the front door, a shower room and WC on the ground floor, one bathroom for every three bedrooms, and a garden. No bedsits.
- Your brief
- Your own requirements on top: area, bedrooms, bathrooms, how the rooms are split between young people and staff, and anything else your service needs.
- Possession
- Empty, with the owner's lender consent in writing where there is a mortgage.
The lease, and why it is shorter than you expect
A lease of the whole property, on a term matched to your own commissioned contract with an option to renew, rather than the ten to twenty year full repairing and insuring lease this market has historically run on.
That is deliberate. The Regulator of Social Housing has warned since 2019 that long, inflation linked, break free leases are what breaks the operator, and reported in April 2025 that the only mitigations left to a distressed provider have been either expecting freeholders to forgo lease payments or handing properties back. The Charity Commission made the same point from the other side in November 2023. A term you cannot carry is not income to us. It is three good years and then a negotiation we lose.
There are two leases, and they are not the same length. The company takes three to five years from the owner, renewed annually. Your lease sits inside that and is matched to your own contract. The commitment to the owner is ours to carry, not yours.
Who does what
You run the house day to day and pay its running costs: council tax, utilities, day to day repairs and the safety certificates. The company holds the lease from the owner and deals with the owner, so you have one landlord to deal with rather than several. There are breaks on de-registration and on a stated arrears threshold.
What the company will not do
- Take a referral, accept a nomination, match an occupier to a room, or have any say in who occupies.
- Provide, arrange, coordinate or supervise any care, support or supervision.
- Help an occupier with a benefit claim.
- Hold itself out as an exempt accommodation provider, a registered provider or an Ofsted registered service.
- Let directly to a 16 or 17 year old in any circumstances.
Each of those, if crossed, changes the company's legal position rather than merely its workload, which is why they are stated here rather than negotiated later.
What the company is looking for
Licensed houses sourced to your brief. The standard shape is five lettable bedrooms, or six with the one closest to the front door used as the staff room, so that the house takes at least five young people.
Where your service works differently, the house follows your brief rather than the standard. Some providers want every bedroom given to a young person and a second reception room used for private meetings and for staff staying over, and that is sourced as readily.
Location is yours to specify rather than ours to assume. Tell us the authority, the travel time your support model needs, and the number of beds you are contracted for but cannot yet fill.
The useful first conversation is a short one: what you need, where, how many beds, and by when.