PENSIONERS are clamouring to get a place in Birmingham’s next retirement village – even though it is not due to open for another three years.

Construction work has not even started on the site in Hagley Road, Edgbaston, but already 1,049 households have put their names down to live there.

When it opens in the spring of 2014, there will be 241 apartments for the over-55s.

Planning permission was granted in January and construction is due to begin this autumn. Hoardings have now gone up to protect the site which has already stirred up controversy.

The Victorian Society and English Heritage objected to the scheme because it involved knocking down a row of large Victorian houses.

But they were dismissed by one councillor on the planning committee as being “middle class idiots”.

Hagley Road will be the third retirement complex for Birmingham.

The first opened in New Oscott last spring and all 260 flats were snapped up before it opened and is now oversubscribed with a waiting list.