Plans to demolish ‘dilapidated’ units for new homes in Bilston revised one year on
A move to demolish a ‘dilapidated’ industrial site in Bilston to make way for more than 50 new homes has been revised a year after it was first put forward.
Morro Partnerships revealed plans to knock down the dilapidated units in Hatton Street and Greenway Road off Salop Street in Bilston and replace them with 51 ‘affordable’ houses last summer.
Most of the units, which are home to a second-hand car dealership, repair shop, garages and factories, would all be demolished and replaced with a mix of two and three-bed homes.
The plans were submitted a year ago but a decision was not made by planners at City of Wolverhampton Council.
The application has now been amended to include more homes – an increase from 51 to 56 ‘affordable’ two-and-three-bed rented homes.
The updated planning application said the extra homes – which also includes a bigger share of two-bed homes – had been developed following talks with the council over the last 12 months.
The land has long been earmarked as a site for new housing and has appeared in council blueprints for the last two decades.
The site is also included in the council’s ‘local plan’ which sets out where new homes will be built across Bilston and Wolverhampton up to 2042.
Hatton Street has also been a hotspot for fly-tipping in recent years with the council even resorting to offering £100 gift vouchers for information on perpetrators who were believed to have dumped between 30 and 40 tonnes of rubbish in the secluded street.
The huge piles of rubbish, which contained everything from beds to rubble to fridges were blocking several businesses from carrying out deliveries.
A statement included with the application said building homes would make efficient use of an “underutilised” commercial site during a time of “pressing need for the city.”
At the start of the year, £28 million plans to build new warehouses and industrial units on a nearby site off Brook Street in Bilston were approved by the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA).
The land, which has been empty for 15 years, will be used to house 15 new units bringing with it, it is hoped, 330 new jobs.
