The site of a closed primary school in Spalding could get a new lease of life with a £5million dementia care and residential home built there.
Country Court Care, which already has two award-winning homes in the town, is seeking planning consent for the development at the closed Goodfellows Primary School site at Spalding Common.
Sandra Taylor, the company’s public relations and marketing manager, said: “We are looking to offer specialist dementia care and residential in a state of the art care home.
“The home will be 60 bedrooms and built to a high specification to accommodate needs of people with dementia and high end luxury living.”
A planning application submitted to South Holland District Council is seeking consent for provision of the care home in buildings of two and three storeys, a new access, parking for 20 vehicles and associated landscaping.
A design and access statement accompanying the planning application says the school buildings are “unviable for a change of use or conversion proposal” and there is a “question over their structural integrity”.
If the application gets consent, the company says the home will create 24 full-time jobs and 14 part-time jobs.
Peterborough-based Country Court Care is a family run company and already has St John’s Care Home on Hawthorn Bank, Spalding, and Ashwood Nursing Home on Spalding Common.
Mrs Taylor said the company has 19 homes at the moment, with another about to open in Huntingdon, and in the last couple of months was named residential care provider of the year against some really tough competition.
The company wants to open its third home in Spalding because it has people waiting for places at the existing homes.
Mrs Taylor said: “Both homes are always full and they constantly get inquiries to take more residents and the sad thing is we can’t accommodate them. I think more people are looking for better quality care for their loved ones and they want to be in a place like Ashwood or St John’s.”
She said the company’s head of dementia care, Susannah Spencer, will work alongside the new home’s designer to create a first-class environment so people with dementia have bespoke accommodation on the ground-floor and easy access to the gardens and outdoor space
l Goodfellows School opened in January 1872. In 1941, senior pupils transferred to the newly opened Gleed Senior Council School and Goodfellows became a primary school.
It closed its doors in 2004 because of falling numbers on the roll despite parents putting up a spirited fight against the county council’s axe.