PERMISSION for 50 new homes to be built on part of the old Roundway Hospital site has finally been given more than a decade after it was left derelict by other building work.

Doric Developments of Melksham has approval for the development, which will include 14 affordable homes.

The three-acre site, which housed the former Katherine McNeile Clinic, has been empty since 2001 when an original plan for 26 apartments including 19 affordable homes was submitted.

But in 2011 Carter Jonas, the estate agents marketing the site on behalf of receivers, sought to renew the planning permission and it was turned down by Wiltshire Council because there was only an average of 1.66 parking spaces per home, short of the council’s new standards of 2.24 spaces per home.

In June, new plans were put forward, proposing more parking spaces to go with 36 private homes, and ten affordable homes, compromising six one-bedroom flats and four three-bedroom houses.

The council has now approved the latest configuration for 50 homes.