Plans for a new 36-flat supported housing development in Harrogate have been given the go-ahead today.
Jackie Snape, chief executive of the Harrogate charity Disability Action Yorkshire, made an impassioned plea to councillors for the scheme to go ahead. She said disabled people wanted to be given more control of their lives.
Ms Snape told Harrogate Borough Council‘s planning meeting that the need for supported housing was growing ever greater as disabled people “want so much more than residential care”.
She was speaking in support of plans to replace the charity’s existing Claro Road care home with 36 flats, which will allow residents to live more independently.
Ms Snape said:
“Disability Action Yorkshire has provided residential care for disabled people in the Harrogate area for the past 60 years, and for at least the last six years we have been working towards stopping that part of our service.
“The reason for this is that the disabled people we work with are telling us very loudly that they don’t want residential care.
“I asked the young disabled people currently living in 34 Claro Road what they thought I should say to you today.
“They said ‘just tell them we are ready, we want choice and control over our own lives, we just want our own front doors, we want what everyone else has.’”
Read more:
Disability Action Yorkshire, which this year celebrates its 85th anniversary, is working with Highstone Housing Association to build three apartment blocks at the Claro Road site.
Residents ‘no longer want residential care’
Ms Snape said the need for this type of accommodation has been growing over the last decade, but became in even greater demand during the pandemic which “solidified the resolve” of Claro Road residents that they no longer want residential care.
She said:
“For the past two years they have been treated differently to the rest of society, at one point not being able to have visits from friends and family while the rest of the country went out to eat out.
“Nearly every day somebody said we wouldn’t be in this situation if we had a home of our own.”
The charity’s plans – which included a mix of one and two-bed flats – were approved with “open arms” by Harrogate Borough Council’s planning committee today.
Works will now start later this month to construct the first of the flats on the grounds of the current home and on a derelict playground which was sold off by the council last year.
The existing care home will be replaced with flats, as well as a base for support staff who will be on site 24-hours-a-day.
Speaking at today’s meeting, councillor Stuart Martin said:
“This is exactly the sort of development we should be building and it’s one of the easiest decisions I’ve taken on this planning committee.”
