Leeds Scarcroft Lodge eyed for care community plans

Retirement home specialist Audley Group has applied to convert Scarcroft Lodge, which now contains offices, in Wetherby Road.

Redevelopment would provide 172 units of specialist accommodation for the elderly as well as turning some of the site’s buildings in to housing, with two new-build homes also planned.

Nick Sanderson, chief executive, Audley Group, said “Having the chance to open another Audley village in beautiful Yorkshire is a real privilege, and Scarcroft Lodge was our first purchase of 2018. This is our third site in Yorkshire, alongside Clevedon and Hollins Hall, and we could not have chosen a better spot; right at the heart of the Golden Triangle.”

A statement by the company reads that it “tries to make the accommodation for their residents as close to a normal home as possible.

“We go to great lengths to eliminate any characteristics of an institutional nature and aim to create the illusion that our residents are staying in a good quality country hotel.”

Scarcroft Lodge was constructed during the 1830s by Quaker wool merchant Newman Cash, who came to Leeds from Coventry in 1815 and whose business flourished as he expanded trade with America.

The house and estate were bought in the 1850s by Robert Tennant, a successful Leeds solicitor. The Earl of Mexborough then took ownership in the 1880s. The Yorkshire Electric Power company bought the site in 1945 and converted the interior to offices and training rooms, with more buildings created from 1949.

The site was owned by Npower until Audley bought it this year.