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Search the Public Notice PortalPlans to build 100 flats and homes as part of huge regeneration plans for former factory sites around a Midlands hospital are to be decided.
Sandwell Council plans to build 74 new flats and 26 homes on the abandoned former GKN Factory in Cranford Street, Smethwick, next to the Midland Metropolitan University Hospital.
The new housing is the latest part of huge multi-million-pound regeneration plans around the Smethwick hospital.
Sandwell Council’s planning committee meets on June 10 to decide on the plans.
The authority’s planning officers have recommended the work is approved when councillors meet next week.
The council’s planners said: “The application proposes an appropriate reuse of brownfield land which would deliver a much-needed mix of new housing for the borough.
“The proposal seeks to deliver residential properties on land allocated for housing in the development plan. It would provide much‑needed homes in Sandwell and contribute to the range of accommodation types and sizes available within the Borough.
“In addition, 25% of the units would be designated as affordable housing which is secured by condition.
Much of the site has already been cleared with the three-storey buildings fronting Cranford Street also set to be demolished as part of the work.
The five-storey apartment blocks would mostly be built facing the canal and hospital, with two blocks and new three-storey houses fronting Cranford Street.
A statement included with the application by Sandwell Council said: “The proposal, though ambitious, provides a well-designed, simple residential environment in which its inhabitants will be able to live in harmony with all those who live there.”
The borough was awarded £18m by the government in levelling up funding in 2024 which, after a range of delays and talks, can now be spent by March 2028 – two years after the original deadline. Sandwell Council will also be contributing £2m towards the work.
The huge £750m Midland Metropolitan University Hospital on the border of the Black Country and Birmingham opened in 2024 after years of delays and nine years after work began.
Up to 800 houses and flats are expected to be built around the hospital as part of the council’s regeneration plans.
Sandwell Council had already agreed to use compulsory purchase powers to buy the empty and abandoned GKN factory in Cranford Street to make way for new housing as well as other surrounding factories and crumbling units.
Early plans said the site would be used for up to 170 homes but was cut by more than a third to 100 units.
The abandoned factory, which has been empty since the 1980s, was home to a go-kart track for a month in 2005 before burning down.
It has since been used for parking and as a site office by Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust.
Another site in Abberley Street, which is owned by the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA), is to be used for around 200 new homes.
Plans for more than 200 flats, shops, bars and a ten-storey 1,300-space car park in London Street were rejected by Sandwell councillors in 2021.
Permission was eventually given in 2023 for 392 flats in a seven-to-fourteen-storey building but work has yet to start.
