CIVIC chiefs hope a new super care home in Southampton will open its doors within three years.

The city council’s cabinet has given the green light to provide fresh funding for the extra care facility in Millbrook.

The new facility will be built on the site of the former Woodside Lodge dementia care home and a neighbouring block of flats in Wimpson Lane.

As previously reported, the council is looking to build the new complex of up to 100 flats to provide “housing with care” for residents who are elderly or have disabilities or conditions such as dementia.

It means residents will be able to live in their own flats, but will have support and be able to call for assistance if required.

Last night, the cabinet rubberstamped spending a further £850,000 on putting together a planning application for the site, as well as funding architects, development agents’ fees and “specialist technical advice”.

It follows on from £350,000 of funding already set aside for the demolition of the buildings at the site, which included the care home controversially closed last year despite a campaign to save the facility.

Overall, the new complex is set to cost £21m to build, and the council says that will be funded from the housing and revenue account budget, largely funded by council housing rent, and right to buy receipts.

Now the next round funding has been approved, a detailed planning application for the new facility will be drawn up and there are hopes work could begin on the site in the next two years.

Labour council leader Simon Letts, who is also responsible for estate regeneration, told the Daily Echo: “This facility is due open in the first three months of 2019, so it’s effectively a two-year building project.

“It will provide an opportunity for elderly residents to live in their own properties but with support on site so they can live in confidence that will be safe and have support.

“We hope to encourage residents in larger properties that this could be the property for them and that will then free up those homes for other people who need them.”

The new care home is the only remaining element of the Millbrook and Maybush regeneration scheme to go ahead after the estate-wide project was scrapped.

As revealed in the Daily Echo earlier this year, the plans, that would have seen hundreds of new homes and shops built in Millbrook, Maybush and Redbridge, were replaced by a new plan to replace the city’s worst council blocks one-by-one instead.

Labour say the change was forced on them by the Government’s cap on social rent that would deprive them of £493m of funding in the next three decades.

However their opponents have accused them of never putting together a proper plan to fund the project, while disputing the amount of money they claim the city will miss out on.