LONG-RUNNING plans to provide new accommodation for a group of Basingstoke people with learning disabilities should be completed by next March - even though a bid for £200,000 from the deputy prime minister's office was turned down.

Jo Young, director of Loddon Alliance, an NHS organisation which currently provides the group's care, said: "We have a timetable now, but we know it is a tight one. We are looking to have the remaining people in new houses by March next year."

She added: "We will need to find the money from somewhere or other, or we will need to find ways of making it less expensive. It's about us finding imaginative solutions."

The money would have helped pay for the transitional cost of housing and support, but not care, for patients moving out of Sherborne House and Darlington House in Oakridge, which are on neighbouring sites.

Projects from all over the country were invited to bid for this so-called "pipeline" money as part of the Government's Supporting People strategy.

Ms Young said 15 patients have already moved out but 14 patients are waiting for the scheme to progress so they can be re-housed by housing associations in a better standard of accommodation.

She said part of the plan is to retain and refurbish one of the bungalows on the existing Sherborne/Darlington site and to use another part of the site for a new building. The capital cost of the scheme is around £2million and it will require an estimated £1.5million to run.

Ms Young said an appeal is to be lodged by Hampshire County Council Supporting People Team against the decision to refuse "pipeline" funding.

She told The Gazette it was assumed the bid had failed because the project was not sufficiently advanced.

She added that all but two of the patients who have already moved have gone into houses in the Basingstoke and Tadley areas, with Loddon Alliance providing care in most cases.

Ms Young explained one resident has been able to live in Tadley - his home area - and work on a new farm project near Newbury.

She said: "It has been a very productive solution which has taken him back into his own community."

She said a "Move-on Advocate", paid for by North Hampshire Primary Care Trust, has been representing the interests of the patients.