A new retirement development boasting 72 affordable apartments could be built on the site of a former independent school. Specialist accommodation for the over-55s is proposed for the vacant Focus School site in Heaton Mersey, Stockport, with every flat available for Older Persons Shared Ownership (OPSO).
Plans submitted by developer Anwyl Partnerships include a four-storey block housing 37 one-bed and 35 two-bed apartments, to be run by an unnamed ‘local housing association’. The development would also include 10 ‘high quality’ semis for general market sale and replace the ‘run down’ old school buildings and also occupy the disused former school playing field.
Featuring a roof garden with long range views, planning papers say the proposed scheme would bring a number of ‘significant benefits’ to the area and wider borough. It states: “The development will help to satisfy the acute shortfall of retirement accommodation in Stockport, which has the highest proportion of residents aged over 55 in Greater Manchester.
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"The borough also has a need for at least 2,400 properties for the elderly without care.” The document argues the scheme would ‘[improve] the quality of life of residents, reducing isolation and pressure on health and social services through preventative means’.
The proposed apartment block is predominantly three-storeys in height but also has two four-storey sections. It also boasts a reception and residents’ lounge, while further facilities include an office, laundry, buggy store, plant room and refuse store. The main residents’ car park has 27 spaces - including six disabled bays - while there would be 18 spaces in a visitor car park at the top of the site.
It is anticipated that the development will have a warden, with residents having access to a 24-hour staffed management system and the option of care should they need it. Meanwhile the red-brick semis fronting Didsbury Road each boast four bedrooms, rear and side gardens and two parking spaces.
Cars will enter the site via a ‘T’ junction with Didsbury Road and there are also plans for a pedestrian route connecting to an existing footpath which links Didsbury Road Masefield Drive and Tennyson Close.The applicant argues that the development would ‘significantly improve the safety and quality’ of the environment, ‘benefitting existing residents as well as future occupiers’.
“The proposal will make beneficial use of derelict, previously developed land, contributing to housing supply without using greenfield land on the edge of settlements,” documents note. “In doing so, it will make optimal use of the site in an area with an existing shortage of land for meeting identified need.”
Summing up the benefits of the scheme, papers state: “The proposed development will make a significant contribution to meeting the need for specialist housing which the current development plan fails to make provision for.” The document also notes that the emerging Local Plan is ‘some time off’ being finalised and would ‘continue to be constrained by Stockport’s green belt’
“In addition, it will directly make a valuable contribution to general housing supply and indirectly assist this through freeing up family housing,” it continues. “There is an overriding case for granting planning permission to secure this important contribution to specialist retirement housing provision, and Anwyl Partnerships look forward to working with the council, consultees and the community to achieve a successful outcome.”
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