ExtraCare Charitable Trust secure its latest retirement village with SALTO electronic access control

(17/12/2007)

The new £33.5m Lovat Fields Village development is Milton Keynes first retirement village. It consists of 244 Apartments and 14 bungalows and offers an affordable home-for-life and independent lifestyle to over 300 local older people. The project is the result of a partnership between The ExtraCare Charitable Trust, Milton Keynes Council, English Partnerships and Focus Futures.

ExtraCare specialises in supported housing schemes and retirement villages throughout the greater Midlands area and the North and currently has 31 villages and schemes completed or in progress. And with a rising older population, it means there is growing demand for safe and secure accommodation and the growth of purpose build retirement villages such as Lovat Fields is accelerating.

ExtraCare Charitable Trust has chosen electronic access control products from SALTO Systems to secure its latest retirement village project in Milton Keynes.

Dean Pendlebury, SALTO Systems UK Sales Manager, said: 'ExtraCare have embraced the ability of electronic access control to provide a secure environment for the over 55's as we have also installed systems at their Lichfield, Northampton and Sheffield sites. At the new Milton Keynes development, SALTO electronic access control equipment now secures the entire site from the main entrance doors, access doors to car parks, and internal doors to Village facilities, as well as the multi-point locks on the apartments and bungalows themselves. Over 300 Mifare controlled locks have been fitted, operated by proximity cards, considered easy to use by the resident group."

"Control is via SALTO's SVN virtual network system which provides 90% of what users get from a fully wired online system but at the cost of a stand alone system. It uses distributed intelligence in the locks and cards to allow Lovat Fields to manage their access control requirements in a secure and comfortable way. Benefits include eliminating the need to replace locks when key security is breached due to the loss or theft of a card, allowing locks to be updated, restricted or deleted remotely without the need to walk the site updating locks with a programmer."

Kevin Hudson, ExtraCare's Development Manager said: "Prior to selecting SALTO we had been contemplating a variety of differing access systems. These were hotel type systems for the apartments and a hard wired access system for entrance doors into the Village.
SALTO offers us the ability to have just one access control system to control an entire site, with one card and one software package. This has enabled us to achieve significant cost savings on our security spend."

"And thanks to strong demand for the first retirement village at Lovat Fields, we're already planning a second site in Milton Keynes. This will provide over 250 homes, all secured by SALTO, which could be open to residents by 2010. There is certainly a demand for such secure accommodation given that the Milton Keynes council predicts that a further 9,286 people over the age of 60 are forecast to be living in the City by 2011."

Related topics:  Building access control system   Door entry systems and locks   Intrusion detection   Locks and safes   Smart card 

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