WORK is set to start next month on a state-of-the-art care home offering a host of new facilities, services and living options.The Moat House, on the fringes of Great Easton, is an established 24-bed residential care home offering round the clock hour nu

WORK is set to start next month on a state-of-the-art care home offering a host of new facilities, services and living options.

The Moat House, on the fringes of Great Easton, is an established 24-bed residential care home offering round the clock hour nursing and residential care including basic dementia care.

The new home has been individually designed to nestle next to the current home and will house 60 en suite bedrooms including enhanced dementia suites. This is the first phase of the redevelopment of the Moat House; the second phase will be the conversion and extension of the existing house into extra care apartments.

Jami Puckering, development director for Retirement Villages, the care home owners, said: "This is a major project which will help establish The Moat House as a first class care home offering the very best in care to its residents."

The new home will incorporate a separate clubhouse on the lower ground floor for the exclusive use of residents in the extra care apartments. At the opposite end, there will be a separate staff entrance with 'back of house' facilities including a laundry and kitchen.

Ground work is expected to start in early March with the building being completed in late summer 2011.

The building has been designed in keeping with the current Moat House which dates back to the 18th century and was originally a rectory. The moat which gave the house its name still feeds the ornamental lake in the grounds.

Once building work is complete, residents will be moved into the new home and phase two of the project will then start.

Retirement Villages Ltd has awarded the contract for the 60-week project to Ipswich-based firm ISG Jackson.