Up to £250,000 is to be spent turning a Hereford house into a temporary home for young women coming out of care.

The property at 3 Blackfriars Road near the city’s Old Market is owned Herefordshire Council, which says it now “surplus to the requirements” of its children services department. It most recently housed the Herefordshire Intensive Placement Support Service.

The council has a responsibility to look after young people coming out of the care system as they reach adulthood, and says self-contained accommodation is the “most suitable” way to house them.

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Young women will use the house for up to two years while receiving “light-touch support” to become ready for more permanent accommodation, the council’s decision notice explains.

Demand for such accommodation “is outstripping supply”, it adds. But the plan “could make a revenue saving” on the alternative of temporary accommodation in chain hotels and bed-and-breakfasts, on which the council spent over £3 million in the last financial year.

The council will first have to apply to itself for planning permission to allow change of the building’s use, its refurbishment and conversion.

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“We have converted two other properties in the same street and it has not been an issue to secure planning approval,” the decision adds.

It says the building “will be refurbished to a high sustainability criteria”.

The decision was made on May 21 but has only just been made public.

The council bought the house for £190,000 in 2006, when it was already fitted out for office use.