Developers were already being offered a large care home site in South Bristol up to a year before residents and their relatives were told it was going to close. And the huge 3,47 acre site of the Amerind Grove care home could now see hundreds of flats built, after council planning officers told the owners that they would look favourably on demolishing the care home and building new homes there.
Residents and their relatives of the 52 remaining residents of the Amerind Grove care home on Raleigh Road in Ashton Gate were told this week that the care home will close, because the company running it could not recruit and retain enough staff to keep it going.
But the plans to redevelop the prime site near North Street’s Tobacco Factory have been drawn up for more than a year. Bristol Live has seen a confidential brochure marketing the site to prospective developers that makes it clear city council planning officers were asked what they thought about it being redeveloped back in December 2021.
Read more: Huge care home village to close, residents told
The brochure, drawn up by Bristol development agents JLL, says they were given favourable indications from city council planners that a scheme to build new homes on the site, alongside a new care home facility, would be backed, because it was a brownfield site in a residential area.
JLL even drew up an indicative plan of what a development on the site might look like, outlining a collection of six or seven-storey blocks of flats. The brochure said that the agents went to the council with the idea of a mixed use for the site, with a repurposed care home and flats above.
With the closure of the care home now confirmed, it is likely that developers will be able to go for a full residential redevelopment of the site. JLL’s confidential brochure described the Raleigh Road site as an ‘exceptional opportunity to acquire a prominent brownfield site with significant redevelopment potential (subject to necessary consents), situated in an extremely desirable residential location within a short walk from the city centre’.
Inviting offers for the site, JLL explained: “A pre-application response was issued by Bristol City Council in December 2021 providing positive support for the proposed wider land use and housing mix principles. The pre-application enquiry proposed the redevelopment of the existing care home site with a newly built, modernised care home facility and a residential development of 150 units with a mix of 17 no. 1-bedroom units, 129 no. 2-bedroom units and 4 no. 4-bedroom townhouses.
“In light of the above, the redevelopment of the site provides a significant opportunity to make a more efficient use of the land in delivering the Core Strategy objectives set out within the pre-application response,” the brochure states, adding that no would-be developer should make contact with the care home or the council.
But with the care home closing, that’s no longer required. “The freehold interest is offered for sale by informal tender,” JLL added. “For clarity, the reprovision of care home use on the site as outlined in the pre-application is no longer required by the vendor. JLL are therefore instructed to approach a shortlist of developers and seek offers for the entire site. Given the excellent redevelopment prospects, both unconditional and conditional (subject to planning) offers will be considered,” they added.
Relatives of the 52 residents of the Amerind Grove care home on Raleigh Road in Ashton Gate were told this week that the care home would be closing, and they would have to find new nursing or care home places somewhere else in the city. The care home has capacity for more than 160 residents, in a bungalow-style care home village, on land that until the late 1980s was the site of the main Wills tobacco factories.
The care home is owned by the UK’s largest care home provider, HC-One, who said it would have to close because they could not find enough staff to run it. Managers said they would work with the council to find alternative provision, and the care home would not close until every resident had found somewhere else to go.
“We are working closely with Bristol City Council and are supporting our Residents, their loved ones and our Colleagues through this process," said a spokesperson for HC-One, the owners of Amerind Grove. "We will only move forward with the closure process as it is safe to do so, and when our dedicated project team has supported every Resident to find suitable alternative care arrangements.”
“Once the home has been safely closed, and each Resident has been supported to find suitable alternative accommodation, we will begin moving forward with the sale of the property. Until that point, we do not know who the purchaser will be or what their plans may be for the future of the property," they added.
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