Spring date for new home (From Tewkesbury Admag)

Spring date for new home

People should start moving into the new houses in Priors Park in Spring 2005.

Work started on the £8million project to replace the run down flats in Seymour Place with houses last April, when bulldozers moved in to demolish the five, three storey blocks.

In their place, and on the empty land between Seymour Place and Abbots Walk Severn Vale are building 78 two, three and four bedroom houses, all with their own gardens.

The houses are all timber framed and the roof trusses are just going up on the first group.

This means that they can then be weather proofed and the rest of the work can continue whatever the weather.

This first group should be ready by April or May 2005.

The whole project is expected to be completed a year later.

The people living in the flats have been moved to temporary accommodation, but all want to come back to Priors Park

Jane Thorndale of Severn Vale Housing said that she would like to celebrate the completion of the work with a carnival for all the residents.

"It is particularly hard for the people still living in the area- they have had to put up with all the mess and disruption," she said.

Dave Richards, chief executive of Severn Vale said that doing something about the dilapidated flats, which date back to the 1960s has been his dream ever since Severn Vale took them over from the Borough Council in 1998.