Work set to start on £6 million housing scheme in Harborough by the end of this year

Work is poised to start on an under-fire £6 million housing scheme in Market Harborough by the end of this year.

The plan to redevelop Naseby Square on the town’s Southern estate is set to get under way in December.

Platform Housing Group are to build 38 ‘affordable’ homes as they rejig the traditional elderly people’s community hub stretching back to the 1950s.

The controversial initiative off Stuart Road was backed by Harborough District Council’s planning committee last year.

The redevelopment was given the go-ahead despite sparking furious protests and a mass petition signed by over 800 people since it surfaced in 2018.

Some 13 bungalows will be demolished – residents have already been found new homes by the housing association.

It was just last week that a councillor’s bid to make a ‘secret’ report into the Naseby Square project available to all district councillors was thrown out.

Cllr Phil Knowles told a full meeting of Harborough District Council last Monday night (June 20) that the highly-sensitive investigation should be shown to the full 34-strong authority.

But the councillor’s motion to the packed meeting demanding total transparency over the issue was rejected by 17 votes to 11.

Cllr Knowles acted after the council paid out £920,000 of taxpayers’ cash for a three-bedroom bungalow and its land to help seal the new housing complex deal.

The bungalow was valued at just £303,000, less than a third of the huge sum paid, on property website Zoopla, the Harborough Mail revealed in April 2021.