TEN ‘defective’ village council houses near Wellington are set to be refurbished and two more knocked down and replaced by a four-home development.

The scheme will be put to Somerset West and Taunton Council (SWT) executive councillors on Wednesday (July 20) and could then go to the full council for final approval in September.

If approved, work would start almost straight away on the ‘Woolaway-style’ properties in Oake Close, Oake, with work taking until the 2023-24 financial year to complete.

The estimated cost of the project was kept confidential in the report going to councillors next week, but assistant director of development and regeneration Chris Brown said it would be ‘substantial’ and met by a mixture of borrowing and capital receipts.

Mr Brown said the scheme was not included in SWT’s capital budget which it approved only in February this year.

He said Somerset County Council would need to also approve the project because SWT could not spend more than £1 million without agreement before a new unitary authority was formed next April.

‘Woolaway’ properties were built in the 1940s and 1950s from a pre-cast concrete frame and today have been designated defective by the Government.

Mr Brown said 10 of the Oake homes would be refurbished using an ‘all walls out’ and ‘fabric first’ low carbon approach.

They would be made structurally robust with a guaranteed minimum 60-year life and their heat demand would be reduced by 80 per cent to achieve the council’s 2030 and 2050 low and zero carbon standards.

Mr Brown said the re-built houses would be exemplar ‘fabric first’ homes and examples of what was possible.

He said: “The new specification will make the properties healthier homes, well insulated, with improved ventilation.

“As new home developers have to resolve concerns relating to phosphates in order to obtain planning permission it is increasingly important that the existing affordable homes are retained wherever possible.”

Mr Brown said tenants on the Oake estate would be decanted to two empty properties as their homes were refurbished before moving back in, and then the final two would be knocked down to allow four houses to be built on the site.

One three-bedroom home would be converted to a four-bedroom property to help meet a high demand in the district for larger family accommodation.

Mr Brown said a £48,000 subsidy had been obtained from the first round of a Social Housing Decarbonisation Funding and the council would be making a further bid when a second window opened.

Consultation has already started with tenants, neighbours, and Oake parish councillors and Mr Brown said to date few concerns had been raised.