Plans to build 30 flats on former hospital site withdrawn

Plans to build a block of flats on the site of a former Norfolk hospital have been withdrawn.

Tang and Associates Ltd had submitted plans to Breckland Council to transform the site of the former Thetford Cottage Hospital, on Earls Street, into a three-storey complex.

The Victorian building would have been demolished to make way for 30 two bedroom flats with a car parking space for each.

The site has remained empty for the past 13 years but in 2017 a petition signed by 1,800 people was submitted to Breckland Council to bring the building back into use after it was sold to a private owner in 2010 but the building remained derelict.

It closed in 2006 as a new £4.5m health centre opened. At the time James Romana-Powling, project manager for Norfolk PCT, said it was a sad day for the former hospital as the state-of-the-art Thetford Community Healthy Living Centre, off Croxton Road, opened.

The plans received 35 public comments on the Breckland Council website with many saying that the block would cause further parking problems and that the building is not in-keeping with the historic image of the town.

Paul Kybird, of Earls Street, said: "It looks like it should be along a river frontage in a city not a tight historic street like Earls Street."

Richard Cooke added: "The proposed development is not sympathetic to the existing streets cape in any respect. While some form of development of the site is clearly essential, it would be preferable to return it to a use similar to that for which it was designed."

The hospital was one of the first in the region to buy an x-ray machine and treated thousands of patients in its 100-year history.

In June 2016 a blaze started at the empty building which prompted neighbours to call for something to be done with the site.

Neighbours complained it had become a danger, with one saying the fire was "an accident waiting to happen".

Tang and Associates Ltd were contacted for comment.