£12.5m veterans’ care village gets thumbs up

Plans for a £12.5m veterans’ care village at Broughton House in Salford have been approved.

Broughton House is the only home for ex-servicemen and women in the North West and in 2016 celebrated its centenary.

Plans for the new village were submitted to Salford City Council in July, 2017 following public consultation.

Work on the ambitious scheme is due to start early in 2018.

The redevelopment of the two-acre site will be partially paid for through a £3m grant from LIBOR funding, a government initiative to redistribute the proceeds of banking fines. Fundraising by Broughton House is ongoing.

The Broughton House Veterans Care Village is planned to be completed by 2020 and will include 64 nursing home bedrooms with a dementia wing; 34 independent living apartments; a military support hub featuring an advice centre, gym, treatment rooms, café, hair salon and meeting rooms; a memorial park with a cenotaph and remembrance walls and landscaped gardens featuring an all-weather bowling green and a bandstand.

Dooley Associates will manage the delivery of the scheme. The project team also includes architects Levitt Bernstein, structural engineers Curtins Consulting, service engineers Building Services Design, landscape architect Exterior Architecture, fire engineers Omega Fire and acoustician Sandy Brown.

Brendan Dooley, managing director of Dooley Associates, which has offices in Manchester, Birmingham and London, said: “We are now focused on getting Broughton House on site alongside our professional team.

“The construction phase will be delicately phased to ensure minimal disruption to existing residents both within and around the site and ensure a high-quality outcome for the residents of the new care village to secure the future of this important charity.”

Ty Platten, chief executive of Broughton House, said: “We are delighted that planning permission has been granted for the development of a Veterans Care Village at Broughton House.

“We are immensely grateful for the support of Salford Council, residents in the area and stakeholders.

“Whilst ex-servicemen and women vary in age from those who served in WWII to more recently Iraq and Afghanistan, the North West has always remained the largest recruitment area in the UK.

“Their needs are here now and will be for years to come. The need to expand our level of care is vital to meet the growing and changing needs of veterans, both now and in the future.

“The decision means we can now progress to the next stage, which will involve starting work on the project in early 2018 with a scheduled completion date of 2020.”