Plan to create 55-bed residential care home near Chesterfield by bringing vacant building back into beneficial use
Plans to create a 55-bed residential care home by redeveloping a vacant building near Chesterfield have been unveiled.
Aspire Health and Care Ltd is seeking planning consent from Chesterfield Borough Council for an extension and alterations to Elmwood House Nursing Home at Elm Street, Hollingwood.
The proposed design shows that the development would be three storeys at the lowest part of the site and two storeys at the highest part of the site. The C-shaped layout has been designed around the existing structure to minimise impact on the current building and retain its character.
Ringwood Hall is the nearest listed building and the proposals have been developed to ensure that the impact on Ringwood Hotel and its surrounding assets is kept to a minimum, says a design and access statement compiled by Jackson Design Associates.
The distance between the proposed care home’s south-west boundary and the nearest residential dwelling is 23.3 metres, and on the north boundary it is 26.2 metres.
A pre-application report referred to in the statement says: “The site is an existing care home in a residential area where the building is in a deteriorated condition and appears to have been vacant for some time. The site is immediately adjacent to a bus stop and in easy reach of a variety of services making this a sustainable location for expansion of an existing facility. To bring a building back into beneficial use is welcomed.”
*Elmwood House, a home for elderly adults with learning, physical and mental disabilities, closed following an inspection by the Care Quality Commission. A report into the findings of the inspection in April 2023 said that the home required improvement and declared the leadership of the service as ‘inadequate’. Among the key findings were that medicines were not managed safely which put people at ‘unnecessary risk’, accidents and incident management was ‘not effective’, and that there were ‘widespread and significant shortfalls’ in service leadership. The care provider was Elmcare Limited. A spokesperson for the CQC later said they had been notified that the care home would close ‘voluntarily’. At that time 22 residents lived in the nursing home which had the capacity for 32 individuals.