Green light for alcoholic treatment centre

Healey Hall

Councillors have given the go-ahead for the historic Healey Hall to become a treatment centre for recovering alcoholics.

Despite concerns, Councillors said they could not reject the application on planning grounds, and it was passed narrowly at last night's Rochdale Township Planning Sub-Committee meeting. Three of the seven councillors voted against passing the application.

The Grade II listed building will now be made a 'residential alcohol therapeutic facility'.

The facility will provide beds for around 30 service users, who would be housed in the facility for no less than three months and anything up to 18 months. Therapy would run from 9am to 4pm Monday to Friday and on some evenings and Saturday mornings.

Treatment would mainly be group related, although there may be some one on one therapy, with the ultimate aim to get patients back in the community alcohol free. The site would provide a 'Therapeutic Community', with no medical intervention.

The users of the facility would be fully self sufficient; cleaning the house themselves and making their own meals.

Visits to the site would be by appointment only, while some allocated outings would take place on Saturday afternoons and users would be able to apply for weekend leave if they complete relevant modules of the programme.

The unit would be staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The programme would be voluntary and users would be free to leave at any point.

Some parts of Healey Hall date back to 1774, while before that there was a sixteenth century stone hall at the site, and prior to that a medieval timber hall.

The Hall was used as a nursing home for around ten years. When that home closed the building was vandalised and many internal features were lost, damaged or destroyed. The current owner bought the Hall in 2000 and spent the next four years restoring it. The Hall has been on the property market for the last two years, during which time no residential buyer has come forward.

The applicant is now considering different uses for the site so that he can find a buyer and use funds raised to continue the restoration of Clegg Hall in Littleborough.