Cartoon creator in care home schemes

Shoe People cartoon creator Jim Driscoll is investing a total of up to £12 million in two care home projects that will create a total of almost 200 jobs in Stourbridge and the Wyre Forest district.

His company has taken over the Park Attwood Clinic in Trimpley, near Bewdley, which is due to open as a new brain injury rehabilitation centre, employing up to 50 people, in early summer.

And he is about to apply to Dudley Council for planning permission to develop the 1.5 acre former Labour Club and YWCA site in Hagley Road, Stourbridge, as a three-storey, "iconic",

U-shaped building to include a 62-bedroomed care home and 38 apartments.

The Stourbridge scheme — expected to open late next year — would create jobs for 100 to 140 people, full and part time.

Mr Driscoll, aged 63, who now lives in Chaddesley Corbett, near Kidderminster, said: "The Stourbridge care centre will look like a block on the South of France, with balconies, and planners have told us it will be an iconic building.

"There will be a 62-bed care home and 38 two-bedroom apartments where people can live and call on care when they need it 24 hours a day.

"People living there would be able to have family to stay with them and it will be fantastic because it will be close to all the amenities of the town centre." The former Labour Club and YWCA in Hagley Road have already been demolished to make way for the development.

Mr Driscoll, who sold the Shoe People brand in 1996, has set up Park Attwood Ltd to run the new care businesses and Christopher Charles Properties as a development company, which is in the process of making a formal application for planning permission for the Stourbridge site.

The Park Attwood Clinic closed last July.

The clinic is now applying for Care Quality Commission registration as a "care home with nursing" and will soon be advertising for up to 50 full and part-time staff. It is expected to open in early summer, offering specialist neurology care.