County Durham developer The Banks Group is planning to build a new care home at the Mount Oswald development in Durham City.
The group has signed an agreement with Yorkshire based Torsion Care to provide a care facility on The Drive, as part of the ongoing redevelopment of the Mount Oswald site. The care home will have 74 ensuite bedrooms within a three and a half-storey development in a facility designed to provide a high quality of care and wellness for residents and staff.
A planning application for the project has now been submitted to Durham County Council, with a view to it coming before the planning committee before the end of the year. Subject to planning approval, Torsion is expecting to start work on site early in 2024 – and the company is looking to make further investments in the region by using the Mount Oswald facility as the centre for a network of further care facilities in other North East locations.
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With its headquarters in Leeds, Torsion Care sits within a wider group of companies within Torsion Group, which develops, constructs and operates large schemes, including care homes, retirement living apartments and residential properties.
Ian Ward, development director at Torsion Care, said: “This is a site that we’ve been working on with Banks for some time and we’re extremely pleased to have reached this agreement. Mount Oswald provides a high quality, well-presented location with excellent transport links, and fits in perfectly with our growing portfolio of care facilities in Yorkshire and the Midlands.
“Our business model works around clusters of different properties operating together across specific geographical locations, and with a number of other regional locations already under consideration, it’s a formula that we’re looking to repeat here, with the Mount Oswald care home sitting at the centre of our North East operations.”
The Banks Group has been progressing its Mount Oswald development since plans were first approved a decade ago. It was designed by Banks in support of the County Council’s vision of Durham City acting as a driver of economic growth in the county, and now includes around 290 completed properties that have been built by David Wilson Homes and Bellway Homes. Earlier this year, the group announced plans for a new residential development at the Mount Oswald site, with nine luxury homes set to be built by the family firm’s new regional housebuilding company, Banks Homes. The local authority is continuing to progress plans to convert the Manor House into The Story history centre and the new Durham University colleges have been occupied since September 2020.
John Ruddick, senior property development manager at Banks Property, added: “Mount Oswald is continuing to develop into the kind of outstanding, high quality, low density, accessible neighbourhood that we described at the very beginning of the project, and we’re very pleased that Torsion has chosen it as its first North East investment location. Their vision and aspirations for the site match our own and we look forward to seeing their project progressing in the coming months.”
