A GREEN light has been given to build a major residential care home in Blandford to help stop the town's OAPs being shipped off to the Bournemouth and Poole conurbation where facilities already exist.

District planners have agreed to the new and innovative home in Milldown Road to ease a chronic shortfall in nursing beds and elderly care in the town.

The care home being proposed by Quantum Care Homes Ltd, on land at Shaftesbury House, will house 73 OAPs on a residential basis and will also include parking and new vehicle and pedestrians access.

"Blandford area people are having to be found care homes, particularly where significant medical treatment or specialist care is needed, in places which result in removal from familiar surroundings, friends and family and at great inconvenience to all, often within the main Poole Bournemouth conurbation or beyond," said a spokesman.

"Judged on analysis against national levels and using existing local care home provision there is a shortfall of over 100 beds for elderly people in the Blandford catchment with 90 per cent of these being required as nursing beds."

District planners have described the design of the new building as very well conceived with "an arts and crafts style intended to be homely rather than institutional.

"Rather than use a more obvious linear format the architects have proposed butterfly' wings stemming from central core facilities.

"The intention is to provide light, views and integration with the gardens," says the report seen by planners.

Only one local resident opposed the scheme, with 19 others writing in support of the building which they describe as outstanding and much needed for the care of the elderly in the town.