Eagerly awaited community facilities have opened at Blaby District’s award-winning development at New Lubbesthorpe.

A Sainsbury’s Local store, GP surgery and 66-bedroom care home are already included as part of the mixed use two-storey building on Tay Road.

A café/bistro and an additional retail unit, possibly a pharmacy, are expected next.

Work on the local centre started in February last year. It completes the Tay Road feature square which includes the primary school and Community Hub.

Eventually covering 394-hectares, New Lubbesthorpe is being created in phases. Ground was broken in 2015 and the first families took residence in 2017.

Since then, more than 1,100 homes have been built with some 4,250 homes planned in total.

The carefully designed new community is a partnership between landowners, The Drummond Estate, developers Barratt Homes, David Wilson Homes, Davidsons Homes and Blaby District Council, with input from Leicestershire County Council Highways.

Sustainability features include solar panels, open spaces and woodlands, hedgehog highways and bird and bat boxes.

Councillor Mike Shirley, Blaby District Council Portfolio Holder for Planning and Strategic Growth, said: “It’s a pleasure to see the much-anticipated first local centre now complete with facilities open and being used by residents. This is an important milestone in the continued growth of this vibrant new community. As we look to the future with the next phases of development there will be many more exciting milestones to come.”