A HOUSING project worth £1.5m will provide 14 family homes for local people to rent.

Endeavour Housing Association will demolish a former council-owned sheltered housing scheme to pave the way for the development.

The houses and bungalows will be available, from March next year, on the former Manor House site in Stillington, near Stockton.

The development will include eight bungalows with two bedrooms, four houses with three bedrooms and two houses with two bedrooms so they can meet the housing needs of as many different people as possible.

Peter Urwin, Endeavour's development manager, said: "We have liaised very closely with local people and Stockton Borough Council to ensure that the design and composition of the development is suitable.

"All the properties will be offered for rent to people who currently live locally, and especially in Stillington.

"It is a local development for local people and fits in with Stockton council's own housing strategy."

The building contract at Stillington is one of three, worth of total of £3.4m, which Endeavour has awarded to Mansell Construction Services.

The other two involved ten bungalows and a community facility for people with learning difficulties in South Shields and seven bungalows for older people in the Moorside area of Consett.

The Thornaby-based association owns or manages nearly 1,600 homes in Teesside, North Yorkshire and County Durham.