Hundreds of two-bedrooms flats will be built across Shropshire in a £136 million project to provide care facilities for older people and those with dementia.

Shropshire Council has made two bids for funding under the Private Finance Initiative to build 400 two-bedroom units of “extra care housing” for rent, and 24 respite units, with facilities for dementia sufferers and their carers.

The units will be located on eight sites across the county, reveals a report being presented to the council cabinet next Wednesday.

The cabinet is being asked to improve six sites. Two are under consideration and will be discussed in private.

The six sites are the former Oswestry Borough Council highways depot at Alexandra Road; land at Wemsbrook, Wem; a former building yard next to Raven House, Market Drayton; land next to care facilities off Welshpool Road, Oxon, Shrewsbury; a former playing field next to The Wheatlands, Bashurch; and land next to Rhea Hall in Highley.

The units are needed because Shropshire’s elderly population is growing at a much faster rate than at a regional and national level.

Council leader Keith Barrow said today: “There are people looked after in their own homes, and there are those who are in residential care, but in the middle there is a void.”