A HEALTH care company has revealed plans to build a new state-of-the-art nursing home that will create at least 80 jobs.

St Cloud Care has drawn up proposals for a showpiece project comprising a four-storey, 70-bed complex that is expected to cost about £3m.

St Cloud says facilities at the proposed new home in Southampton Road, Hythe, will include treatment rooms and a hydrotherapy pool.

It comes just days after the Daily Echo revealed that three “super care homes” are due to be built at Romsey, Fair Oak and Netley Abbey in a £30m scheme that will create more than 300 jobs.

Hartford Care set its sights on Hampshire following the success of its new care home at Lyndhurst, which sees one new admission per week.

Work has already started on the prestigious Sunnybank House development in Fair Oak, with the new 60-bed home set to open next summer.

The Netley Abbey project will comprise 65 beds and nine exclusive living apartments on a site in Victoria Road.

The third and final phase of the scheme will begin next spring, when work will start on Hartford Care’s fourth care home in Hampshire will commence at Abbotswood, Romsey.

The St Cloud application aims to ease the growing shortage of nursing home places in Hythe and other areas of the New Forest.

Large parts of the district have a higher-than-average number of pensioners. The figure is expected to rise as life expectancy increases, resulting in an ever-increasing demand for nursing home places.

St Cloud is seeking consent to transform the former site of the Forresters respite care centre, which was demolished earlier this year.

A St Cloud spokesman said: “The site has been in care home use for many years.

“There’s a great demand for the highest care home accommodation, capable of meeting high dependency needs and the old building, with its steps and narrow passages, was totally unsuited to modern care needs.

“The new home is intended to provide 70 single bedrooms of between 16 and 20 square metres with generous en-suites.

“The design philosophy is to create a domestic, family-scale environment that enables staff to provide appropriate levels of care.”

The spokesman said full use would be made of the extensive grounds, which included a wooded area full of mature pines.

“Apart from a first-rate facility for Hythe it is anticipated that the scheme will provide a broad spectrum of jobs for the local community,” he said.

Linton Connell, a director of St Cloud, said the company aimed to build a nursing home “both we and Hythe can be proud of”.

New Forest District Council said it had only just received the planning application and was thus unable to comment.

A previous proposal to build a nursing home on the site was withdrawn after being deemed invalid by the council, which cited a paperwork error by the applicant.