Family homes and apartments will be built on the site of an old care home in Clifton in a bid to reduce the city’s 11,000-strong waiting list.
Laura Chambers Lodge, in Swansdowne Drive, has been vacant since 2016.
Residents living in the area said it had been prone to anti-social behaviour in the years since.
On Wednesday, 6 May, plans were approved to demolish the old care home building to make way for a new block featuring 40 apartments, as well as 12 new family homes.
The new homes will be built in a bid to address a significant housing waiting list, which stands at around 11,000 people.
On average people wait over four years for a home.
The housing crisis became so acute in 2024 that people waiting for council homes were stopped from bidding on many properties, while priority was given to hundreds of families stuck in temporary accommodation such as B&Bs.
To address this, the council is aiming to buy and build new homes and bring vacant properties back into use, while the Labour Government is aiming to push for 1.5 million new homes to be built by the end of its first term.
A planning statement says: “The proposals will provide for a mix of apartment and family home sizes, including four wheelchair-accessible apartments, and will provide much-needed affordable housing.
“The scheme will include common open space, with planting to assist biodiversity in the area.
“On foot and by cycle, the development provides a friendly environment, as the routes are clear, open and overlooked by the new homes to promote safety.
“The proposed development represents a viable and deliverable prospect that would be wholly in keeping with the local built environment, building on the positive characteristics of the area to propose a responsive and sustainable residential scheme.”
Following discussions with planning officers, the height and massing of the apartment building were reduced.
After the care home closure, the vacant building has been costing the Labour-led Nottingham City Council £70,000 each year to maintain and keep secure.
The council says it “rigorously investigated” the reuse of the existing building to convert it into individual flats.
It had been planning to convert the building into temporary accommodation, but the authority ultimately decided it was unsuitable.
Documents say the existing building has substantial concrete floors and walls that would have required significant structural alterations and additional support to make any meaningful changes to the accommodation, which would not have been financially possible.
Following changes in the government’s Right to Buy policy under Labour, funding was made available, which opened up an opportunity to use the site for the development of council housing.
The final scheme was drawn up after the Labour Government agreed to pay £10.5 million in Right to Buy receipts back to the council in October 2024.
The money had originally been paid to the former Conservative Government, which had imposed a condition requiring councils to use Right to Buy receipts within five years.
Cllr Jay Hayes (Lab), executive member for housing and planning, and the council’s chief executive, Sajeeda Rose, wrote to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to request that the money be returned after the condition was relaxed under the new government.
In total, £8.37 million from the returned money will be used for the scheme, on top of a further £1.4 million in Section 106 funding, which is typically provided by the developers of other schemes in the city to make them more acceptable.
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