FUNDING has been secured for a £5.6m scheme to build sheltered housing for elderly people.

It will be a complex of individual apartments with care services available to residents 24 hours a day, seven days a week, built in Easingwold.

Social services officials say the flats, known as extra care housing, are the best way to provide older people with the support they need while maintaining their independence.

The Department of Health has now offered £1.9m towards the project, completing the £5.6m funding package.

The cash will be added to the £1m already pledged by the Regional Housing Board, £1m pledged by North Yorkshire County Council and £1.7m from the National Housing Association.

The project is a partnership between North Yorkshire County Council, Hambleton District Council, Selby and York Primary Care Trust and not-for-profit specialist in care developments Housing 21.

County Councillor Murray Naylor, executive member for social services with responsibility for older people, said: "Extra care is very much the way forward in North Yorkshire. It provides the very best care of a residential home but with the added dignity, privacy and independence of a private flat.

"No matter how good our residential homes are, given the choice, most people prefer to live their own lives in their own homes. Extra care provides the very best of both worlds, is a superb concept and a model of future care across North Yorkshire."

The planned development at Manor Road will replace Tanpit Lodge elderly persons home and free up that site for development of other community services in the town.

Derek Law, the county council's corporate director for social services, said: "We are delighted by the news from the Department of Health.

"It is wonderful to see plans for such an excellent older people's service move forward. Coupled with the opportunity this will create to develop new community services in the town, we've really got something to celebrate.

"Extra care housing within the town will give local older people the opportunity to continue to live independently within the community but with the piece of mind that should they need care is on hand."