Catholic Healthcare will be hoping it does not encounter the same problems that have brought other developers undone as they have tried to tap into the growing aged care market in Bathurst.

Catholic Healthcare has lodged an ambitious DA with Bathurst Regional Council that would see it build 103 new aged care beds on the site of the former St Vincent’s Private Hospital.

It hopes to have the facility up and running in 2017. But, as other developers have found, the road between proposal and fruition is not an easy one.

Crighton Developments was the first to taste trouble when its proposal for an aged care facility in Eglinton fell over during the global financial crisis.

And just this month the Whiddon Group suffered a setback in its expansion of its Kelso facility when its builder went into voluntary liquidation.

The Whiddon Group says there are already 60 names on the waiting list for its 60 new beds and, as anyone who has tried to find a bed for an ageing relative would know, that demand is only getting stronger.

At a time when the latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show the total

number of people aged 70 and over living in the Bathurst region had grown from 3472 in 2009 to 3953 by 2013, the need for quality aged care facilities is clear.

Catholic Healthcare is the latest to seize on that business opportunity. Something tells us it won’t be the last.