DECISIONS on two new housing schemes have been delayed.

Brentwood Council was due to make decisions on whether two new schemes for prime Brentwood sites should be given the go-ahead but both have been deferred.

The schemes were to build 24 flats on the site of Brunel House, in St James Road.

The mixed-use proposal, from Taylor Wimpey, would also involve creating 1,270sqm of office space, 547sqm of retail space and 115sqm of space for a creche.

Taylor Wimpey would look to move its 70 staff to the site from its building in Kings Road, where the lease expires at the end of the year.

The second proposal is to knock down old hospital buildings on Mascalls Park, in Mascalls Lane, Warley.

Developer Bellway Homes wants to build 26 detached houses and 14 flats.

The scheme would involve keeping a cottage on the site for residential use and retaining the water tower.

The breakdown of the new homes would be 20 five-bedroom homes and six six-bedroom houses. There would also be six one-bed flats and eight two-bedroom flats with all the flats being available as affordable housing.

The site was initially developed during the 1930s as part of the wider Essex County Lunatic Asylum complex – which opened during the 1850s and was later known as Warley Hospital.

The main Warley Hospital facility closed in 2001, but with temporary prefabricated extensions added in 2000, Mascalls Park Hospital continued to operate until early 2011, when all services were moved to a new mental health facility at Goodmayes Hospital, in Ilford.

The site is just over nine acres.