Work is taking place to create new council housing in Reading on a site that has been dormant for nearly 20 years.
Construction is underway on a project to build 30 new council homes in Dwyer Road, Southcote, on the site of a former care home.
The Alice Burrows care home was opened by Reading Borough Council in 1967 to provide residential care for 38 physically frail older people.
But the facility was closed in 2007 after 40 years in operation, and demolished in the following years.
Now, construction work is being undertaken to build 100 per cent affordable council houses there.
Photos from the site show a huge crane that has been used to assist construction work, with the seven buildings starting to take shape.
Once complete, a five-bedroom house, four semi-detached properties, 10 three-bedroom townhouses and 15 one- and two-bedroom apartments will be created for people on the council’s housing register.
These will be contained in an apartment block, a terrace of six homes, and five other buildings serving as family-sized homes.
The apartment block could be called ‘Appleford Mews’ according to a concept image by HTA Design seen on the hoardings for the building site.
But the image creator instead spelt the building ‘Appietord Mews’, which is likely a spelling error, as the development can be viewed from Appleford Road.
The crane has been used to lay bricks for a four-storey apartment block that can be seen on the hoardings.
The work is being undertaken by Francis Construction. The first bricks for the project were laid in December 2025.
According to the website Construction Map, building work will be completed in January next year.
The site was officially designated for residential or residential care use in the council’s Local Plan adopted in 2019.
A plan for the 30 homes was submitted in May 2023 and approved by the council’s planning applications committee in December of that year.
Considerations about what to do with the care home site were undertaken in 2013, 10 years before the decision was made.
At the time of the approval, councillor John Ennis (Labour, Southcote) said: “It’s been a decade of waiting, it’s been a decade of promise.
“As a local councillor, we’ve been looking at this piece of land which has been lying idle for a long, long time, we’ve been promising residents we would build there.
“I couldn’t promote this more.”
The project was unanimously approved at the meeting.
The area is suburban and is near the edge of Reading.
The site is located at the junction with Burghfield Road, which leads to The Cunning Man pub.
Nearby facilities include the Tesco Express Esso fuel station and the Greggs drive-thru in Bath Road, the Asda Superstore in Tilehurst and Kings Academy Prospect secondary school.
