38 homes planned for site of warehouse
PLANS have been submitted to build 38 affordable homes on the site of a former warehouse.
The brownfield industrial site just off Station Road in Facit, Whitworth, was previously owned by Slingco, an oil and gas company, before being sold to developers Westchurch Homes Ltd.
Slingco has relocated to Rawtenstall, meaning no jobs will be lost in the change of ownership at the site.
The plans, which were submitted to Rossendale Borough Council, consist of 38 two-storey affordable rent homes split into; eight one-bedroom apartments, 11 two-bedroom mews properties and 19, three-bedroom semidetached or mews houses.
Subject to planning permission being granted, Westchurch hopes to commence construction late this year or in early 2022.
Parking spaces will be provided to the front or sides of the houses while a parking court area will be built for the apartment block.
According to the plans, all dwellings will have a rear garden, with the apartment block served by a communal garden.
Some trees are planned to be removed from the north of the site, but plans to plant replacement trees and shrubs as well as creating small hedgerows between front gardens have been outlined.
The developers, in the plan’s design and access statement, say due to Covid ‘the current scheme subject to this application has not been subject to formal pre-application consultation with Rossendale Borough Council or immediate site neighbours’.
They also say they anticipate ‘that the specific affordable housing provision will be secured by way of Section 106/condition in agreement with the council’s planning and housing officers during the course of the planning application’.
In the application design and access statement, the applicants say: “The site is a suitable brownfield development site which lies primarily within the settlement boundary of Facit/Whitworth. Its redevelopment would be in line with the overall strategy to direct development to settlements to support services and for the best use of previously developed land.”