Residents set to ‘roll with it’ in new homes

SOME 14 ‘aged friendly’ apartments have been delivered in Burnage, Manchester and named after the rock band Oasis who hail from the area.

Southway Housing Trust and Bardsley Construction have completed the £1.4m development to be known as Oasis Close.

The development is just off Kingsway Road in Burnage, on the same estate where the brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher from the Oasis band grew up in their own council (now Southway-owned) home.

The social housing scheme consists of three blocks of one-bed apartments in Thornfield Road on the site of the former Green End Road Compound.

Its completion was marked with a ceremony hosted jointly by Southway and Bardsley with tenants and local councillors in attendance.

Southway Housing Trust is a not-for-profit local housing company based in Didsbury which owns and manages almost 6,000 homes throughout the Burnage, Chorlton, Didsbury and Withington districts of South Manchester.
 
Oasis Close is Southway’s latest instalment of purpose-built affordable homes for older people to downsize to in their own neighbourhoods.

Elsie Beadow, 83, who has downsized to Oasis Close from a three-bedroom property five minutes from Oasis Close, said: “To feel provided for is important, as unfortunately we do not live in a very Age Friendly society. I am over the moon to be here.”

Greater Manchester-based Bardsley won the contract to design and construct the scheme in partnership with architects Pozzoni Management Services and structural engineers Alan Johnston Partnership, with work on site beginning in December 2015.

Ged Rooney, procurement director at Bardsley Construction, said: “Completion of this housing scheme for Southway Housing Trust is further evidence of our long-established and widely respected experience of working in partnership with social housing providers and the wider public sector in our heartland of the North West of England and also in Yorkshire and the Midlands via our regional offices.

“We look forward with confidence to strengthening our pipeline of such contracts in the remainder of 2016 and into 2017.”

Karen Mitchell, chief executive of Southway Housing Trust, said: “With more than half of our tenants over 50 we are proud to be investing in housing and communities in a way that improves the lives of older people. We always aim to genuinely listen to the views and needs of tenants and shape our services around them, which this build is a credit to.

“In a wider context as a provider we try to meet the range of housing needs of local people; age friendly apartments for downsizers supports this, freeing up family homes for those on the social housing waiting list.
 
“Manchester needs a range of genuinely affordable options that address the variety of needs of the people that live here, and our new build programme will continue to deliver them.”

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