£23m county blueprint for care of elderly given the go-ahead

The £23m development in Harrogate, to provide nearly 140 extra-care housing units along with jobs and training for people with learning disabilities from Harrogate College, has been approved by North Yorkshire County Council’s executive.

Extra-care facilities, which are designed to allow elderly residents live independent lives while having access to professional on-site support, are seen as the best way in coping with the soaring elderly population in Britain and North Yorkshire – where the number of over 65s is predicted to rocket by 50 per cent and number of over 85s by 65 per cent by 2020.

But Government grants from the Homes and Communities Agency, which have funded a substantial part of the facilities set up in the county over the past six years, have now all but dried up.

The new Harrogate development is paid for by a complex partnership between the voluntary, private and public sectors.

And following the announcement that it has been given the go-ahead, the county council’s director of adult services Derek Law told the Yorkshire Post yesterday he hoped it would provide the future model for how elderly care is provided across North Yorkshire over the next 10 years.

“We are looking at doing this all over,” Mr Law said.

“We are having separate discussions within the county council and putting together business cases that will hopefully demonstrate we should be doing this all over North Yorkshire for the next 10 years.

“This model could be the blueprint for the way we are going forward.

“We are having to find creative ways of pooling together our resources.”

Under the new proposals, two extra-care schemes will be built in Wetherby Road and in Starbeck on the site of the county council’s former highways depot, and will include 24 specialist dementia units.

The communal facilities would include a pub and general store, run on a social enterprise model and staffed by residents and people studying at the nearby college.

North Yorkshire already has 13 extra-care facilities across the county and is considered a national leader in the field.

Its executive member for adult services, Chris Metcalfe, said: “This scheme represents a wonderful opportunity for the county council. If we are going to provide extra-care in the future, this is what it is going to look like.

“In the past we have been dependent on Government grants but there are now no more of these to come.

“We now need to find a different way of going forward.

“Elderly people’s homes are a concept of the past – extra-care facilities are the replacement.

“These facilities will ensure every resident on the development has their own front door and can determine the level of privacy they want.”

The scheme draws together North Yorkshire County Council, Harrogate Neighbours Housing Association, Harrogate Council, Bramall Construction and Harrogate College, and is expected to create around 50 jobs in the social care, retail and construction sectors.

Despite the number of different partners involved, the county council denies it will make the project more complicated to run.

Plans are expected to be submitted in the summer.

Residents currently living in the county council’s elderly people’s home at Woodfield House will have the option of moving into one of the two new extra-care schemes when the facilities are built.

County council figures reveal an extra 52,000 residents over the age of 65 are expected to be living in North Yorkshire by 2020 – an estimated one in four of whom will be suffering from dementia.