Flat replacements given approval

Last month the Wrekin Housing Trust (WHT) was granted permission to knock down the eight buildings, containing 72 flats, and a bungalow in Donnington.

Telford and Wrekin Council’s planning department has now granted planning permission for the replacement two- and three-bedroom homes, which will all be designated as affordable housing.

The site, on Leonard Close, is just north of Donnington Wood Church of England Voluntary Controlled Junior School, and a WHT statement said “keep out” and “hard hat only” signs would be posted to warn passers-by, and machinery would be chosen to minimise dust and pollution.

A design statement, prepared by DJD Architects, said: “The site comprised eight, three-storey blocks of nine two-bedroom flats constructed around the early 1970s and one bungalow, originally for the caretaker of the junior school.”

Plans to demolish them and build new homes on the two-and-a-half-acre site, it adds, “came about as a result of falling demand for the existing two-bedroom flat accommodation, coupled with structural issues identified in the construction of the existing blocks, which would require costly remediation in the long term”.

Martin James, a member of WHT’s development team, briefed Donnington and Muxton Parish Council about the plans in November. He told members that “structural movements and widespread damp, in particular in the ground floor flats” were among the reasons behind the plans. The buildings would cost £50,000 each to fix, he said, and there were also “ongoing issues with demand”.

The planning statement continues: “The proposals comprise 30 two-bedroom and 13 three-bedroom houses.

The proposed plots are to be offered for affordable rent by WHT.”

The parish council went on to offer no objection to the plans, but said in its consultation response that it was “disappointed that no provision has been made for bungalows”.