A CONTROVERSIAL plan to build a care home at a former pub and play den is a step nearer after a £12 million loan was agreed.
The project to build a 76 bed care home at the former Harvester in Droitwich Road in Worcester has received a £12.4 million loan from Atelier, announced today.
We reported in April how demolition work was carried out at the former pub with cranes on site as the building, formerly known as Perdiswell House, was knocked down.
The care home will replace the derelict former pub and restaurant on Droitwich Road, providing care facilities to "support local need".
According to Savills, 14,400 new care home beds will need to be built every year between 2022 and 2032 to support our aging population.
This marks Atelier’s second loan with this leading care home developer and operator.
The loan follows a series of recent financing deals in the care sector, including a £9.8m loan for the purchase of a 107-bed care home in North London.
Rav Kudhail, lending manager at Atelier, said: “This is our second loan with Macc Care who are committed to providing individualised care within each home they develop and operate. We are looking forward to continuing our relationship with our borrower throughout the development of this care home in Worcester.”
We reported last July how Worcester City Council’s planning committee gave the green light to demolish the former Perdiswell Harvester and replace it with a 76-bed care home – a year after throwing out a similar plan for being too big.
It was a tight vote that resulted in the plan by care home provider MACC Care getting the thumbs up from the committee.
Those councillors opposing the new care home again criticised its ‘ugly’ design.
And he was not wrong with the planning committee split over the care home’s look.
Cllr Alan Amos said it looked like “something that was built in East Germany in the 1950s” and then Cllr Owen Cleary, who called the designs “ugly and depressing” last year, said not much had changed and called for the plan to be turned down.
RECOMMENDED READING: MACC Care Home to replace former Perdiswell Harvester in Worcester
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Whereas Cllr Louis Stephen said the current site was an eyesore and the new plans looked like a “quality design” and building it would “significantly improve” the amount of housing in the city.
The plan for a 78-bed care home on the same site was rejected by councillors in 2022, who called the designs “ugly and depressing” and “lacking imagination” and akin to “barracks for warehousing people.”
Councillors went against the advice of officers when it rejected the plan and planners, who described the latest plan as “broadly identical” to the one rejected last year, again recommended the care home be approved.
A controversial plan to build a McDonald’s drive-thru on the site was eventually withdrawn in November 2019 after hundreds objected saying it should not be built near a school.
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