PLANS have been lodged for a new children’s home in Weymouth.

Dorset Council has lodged the planning application for the former registration office and adjoining adult education centre at 45 Dorchester Road.

It asks to build a two storey residential children’s home and includes the demolition of an existing single storey modular building and glazed link corridor together with a change of use for the existing property from office to residential use on the first and second floors.

The new building, and conversions, will include two flats for emergency accommodation and space for supervised family visits for children in the care of the local authority who are still able to see their parents.

Executive director of children’s services, Theresa Leavy, told a briefing meeting about the proposed development earlier in the year that the site and its staff would do its best to be good neighbours and would encourage input from those living nearby.

She said that a new building, to the right of the former registration office, would provide a home for four or five children, likely to be teenagers, who would have two to three staff caring for them at any time.

The proposals include pulling down the existing classroom structure to the right of the main building prior to the new building arriving, which would largely be manufactured off site, and then craned in. The process, which is likely to result in a brief road closure, is believed to be less disruptive to neighbours than building on the site.

The new building would be timber framed with two storeys at the front and one at the rear. A preliminary study had shown that, because the building would be set back, it is unlikely to block light from next door Kildare Court.

The proposals say the main former registry office building would be converted to contain office space, meeting rooms and two flatlets, designed for emergency and short-term accommodation.

It would also have a contact centre for children in the care of the local authority to meet with family members during supervised contacts, as directed by the courts. These sessions were previously held at the former Horizon Centre in Cromwell Road, Weymouth which has since been sold by the council.

The director has said that the council’s social services teams hoped to get as many local children back into Dorset as possible. The predecessor council closed and sold former children’s homes in Cattistock and Dorchester leaving Dorset Council with only a handful or residential spaces, all of them at The Cherries special unit in Weymouth.

At the time plans for the new home were announced the council had 482 children in its care, 60 of them living outside the county. Roughly one third of the local children in the care of the council come from the Weymouth and Portland area.

A decision on the building application is expected to be made in late autumn with building work starting shortly after that and the new unit ready for occupation by winter 2021.

Public comments can be made on the application until September 1. The plans can be seen on the Dorset Council planning website.