Ozzie Ertosun

In 1988 Ertosun did six months' work experience at Nora's Lodge, a small residential home in Sydenham owned by a family friend. He told Caring Times in 2019 that he decided then he wanted to work in care and felt he could do it better in a nicer building. His family had a construction background, so he built his first home with his father and some tradesmen over two years. Bowood Nursing Home in Catford, 24 beds, opened in 1989. The Lewisham inspector had warned him that families might hesitate to place their parents with someone so young, and the first nine months brought no admissions. He then hired an experienced manager who worked for him for 28 years.

The group then grew through local authority work. Ertosun began taking over former council homes in Lambeth, and won a 15-year contract there covering three homes, which Excelcare refurbished before it built a new one. A tender in Cambridge opened up East Anglia. A 30-year contract in Milton Keynes followed, under which Excelcare buys buildings, rebuilds them and runs the care. Essex came next. About 15 years before 2019 he also started a homecare business. Companies House shows him as a director of Excelcare Holdings Limited since February 1996.

In 2019 he named recruitment as his biggest concern. He said Excelcare had closed about five homes in five years because the fees would not have allowed it to care for people properly, and that the group had written to ministers and MPs asking for easier immigration rules for qualified nurses. In 2017 he trekked to Everest Base Camp with his brother and two friends, raising more than £10,000 for St Christopher's Hospice in south London.