New homes for the elderly to be built in Leicester
Nine new homes are to be built at Wyggestons Hospital. Wyggestons offers ‘affordable’ rented homes, support and care services for people aged 60 and older.
In 2019, Leicester City Council[1] gave the green light for a three-storey extension to the administration hub, eight flats and six new homes on the site, in the city’s Hinckley Road. A condition was attached to the planning permission[2] stating the new buildings could only be used by staff and residents of the care provider, rather than for external rent or sale.
This new application forms phase two of the provider’s extension plan, and will add eight, one-bed, single-storey homes in two sets of four terraces to the southern side of the hospital land, next to Westcotes Drive. A two-bed, detached bungalow will also be built there.
The homes, described as “cottages”, will all be “spacious to enable easy movement should residents be in a wheelchair”, planning documents state. They will also have wet rooms designed for “total inclusion and flexibility for residents with mobility issues”.
Future residents will not have their own gardens, but will be able to use the communal green spaces around the site. The scheme will “make a modest but nevertheless welcome contribution to the provision of affordable accommodation for the elderly within this inner area of the city”, city planning officers said.
One objection was raised against the plan. The scheme would create an eyesore within the West End Conservation area, the commenter feared, and noise, dust, traffic[4] and mess resulting from the construction of the buildings would negatively impact residents in Westcotes Drive.
However, council planning officers said the new buildings were designed to match those in phase one of the work and would be a “coherent continuation” of that work. They acknowledged construction “can be disruptive to neighbouring residents and have temporary adverse pollution and amenity impacts”.
Nine new buildings were “not an inconsiderable scale of development” for the area, they added. A condition of the approval was that a construction management plan be drawn up detailing mitigations against any disruption resulting from the development.
References
- ^ Leicester City Council (www.leicestermercury.co.uk)
- ^ planning permission (www.leicestermercury.co.uk)
- ^ Battle of the churches as congregation objects to new worshippers moving into shop next door (www.leicestermercury.co.uk)
- ^ traffic (www.leicestermercury.co.uk)