Work finally starts on £4.6m plans to turn this former pottery site into social housing

Work to build 37 homes on a former pottery site has finally started – more than five years after planning permission was first granted.Your Housing Group is delivering the £4.6 million affordable housing scheme on the site of what was once Simpsons Pottery’s Elder Works, in Grange Street, Cobridge.Stoke-on-Trent City Council granted planning permission for 27 two-bedroom houses and 10 three-bedroom houses in February 2013.But since then the site has remained an overgrown eyesore and become a dumping ground for fly-tippers.YHG says the family homes for affordable rent will bring ‘a fresh property option’ to Stoke-on-Trent.The Elder Works closed in 2004, and the derelict factory was demolished six years later following an arson attack.Contractor MCI Developments, which lodged the initial planning application, is now working with YHG on the scheme.The development will be delivered in phases, with the first homes due to be ready for occupation by next March. The scheme is scheduled for completion by December 2019.YHG already owns and manages 1,800 homes in Staffordshire, including the Willow Barns, Maple West and Oak Priory extra care schemes.But Grange Street will be the housing association’s first new build housing estate in the area.Chairwoman Kathy Doran said YHG will manage the estate once it has been built.The development has received some funding from Homes England. Moorcroft ward councillor Mohammed Pervez also welcomed the start of building work but raised some concerns about the scheme.