A bid to provide more than 120 homes on the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital site begins next month after plans for the first properties were approved.

Outline plans for the Mytton Oak Road site were approved earlier this week to provide 65 properties to be sold on the open market, including 10 affordable homes, and a further 57 specifically for “key workers”.

Now the go-ahead has been given for a four-storey building which will provide 16 key worker residential units. Today hospital bosses said they hoped work would begin early next month.

A spokesman from the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust said: “We are pleased to have received full planning permission for the initial phase of the residential accommodation project at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital. The trust has worked hard with Shrewsbury and Atcham Borough Council to reach this point.”The homes will help revitalise accommodation at the RSH with three and four-storey blocks replacing the existing student nursing accommodation. Plans for the first phase also include car parking, alterations to vehicle access and the provision of open space.

The development will provide living quarters for more than 100 medical students in the final three years of their degree as part of the hospital’s new Keele University School of Medicine Shropshire Campus.

SABC planners this week used delegated powers to approve the plans with a number of conditions, including noise, odour and fume assessments before certain parts of the work can begin.