Chelford retirement community rejected out of hand
Plans for the Holly Tree House site in Cheshire’s Green Belt have been refused consent, while a 200,000 sq ft warehouse at British Salt’s Middlewich plant can go ahead.
In line with officer recommendation, Cheshire East Council’s strategic planning board refused the Chelford proposal, with 11 members voting to reject the application from David Hughes, the former sports retail tycoon.
Planner J10 and architect Pozzoni advised the applicant.
The Holly Tree Park scheme proposed the demolition of some existing buildings and their replacement by a 60-bed registered care home with isolation facilities, 72 assisted living apartments ranging between one and three bedrooms each in 13 blocks, and a village centre hub building including 14 close-care units and a clinic.
Retained on the site would be a fishing and boating lake, a tennis court, gardens and woodland walks. The plans were initially slated to go before the SPB in October but, with refusal recommended, were withdrawn and tweaked.
Planning documents refer to a 10-acre site being considered, while the whole Holly Tree House estate has previously been marketed at 24 acres in total.
In all, 133 objections were registered locally, but 40+ letters of support were also submitted, while a care needs assessment from Christie & Co suggested a stark undersupply of care beds in the area, a shortage of more than 500 in 2020.
However, the site sits wholly in the Green Belt, and its promoters failed to convince officers that the threshold of “very special circumstances” required to overcome that weighting had been met.
Webb Gray is the architect for the British Salt project. Credit: via Barques
British Salt’s application, discussed at the end of a five-hour meeting, saw approval for a motion that authority to be delegated to the head of planning to approve the scheme with a range of conditions attached.
The company, along with partner Stoford Properties, put forward plans for a 197,715 sq ft building including warehousing and ancillary offices at land off Faulkner Drive, Middlewich, within the company’s estate. Webb Gray is the architect and Avison Young the planner.
British Salt, owned by Tata Chemicals Europe, received consent for plans including a new manufacturing facility in summer 2021. Local concerns centred mainly on the increase in HGV traffic caused by the expansion.
Approval means some loss of biodiversity as the intended 11.3-acre site is partly wooded, meaning a condition has been attached to offsite biodiversity provision. Ten of the SPB voted in favour of the plans.
Elsewhere in a packed agenda, Redrow received reserved matters approval for 454 homes at land off Giantswood Lane and Manchester Road in Congleton.
