Refusing care homes within town centres

Within Walton-on-Thames Town Centre, there was the old 28,000 sq ft Homebase retail shed with 146 car spaces on a 2.5 acres, developed on the old Town Hall site. Legal & General bought the site and proposed 220 residential care units (C2) and now the Council plan on refusing. The novel Officers report to the Planning Committee (20 Oct) on the planning application (1 May) contends that L&G’s scheme would “undermine the viability and vitality of the town centre”, that it isn’t an “efficient use of land” and that there is no “evidence of need”. What is clearly preferred by Members is standard residential with affordable housing.

Policy on town centre impact was originally brought forward to prevent out of centre retail development from killing traditional High Streets. The ‘efficient use of land’ is the new policy code supporting higher development densities and ‘evidence of need’ was what Councils required to support their CIL/s106 infrastructure and affordable housing demands. These strands have been re-twisted to imply that some town centre development must demonstrate ‘need’ to justify what a Council prefers not to see, despite a financial willingness to invest to meet a commercially judged demand.

Many Councils have, in the past, sought to argue that care homes were not in class C2 and hence affordable housing was required. Typical of such, for example, is the Inspector’s decision in the Portishead Primary School Site Inquiry (2012) allowing the appeal.

Like many, this Council has a substantial problem in allocating sufficient for housing need. But as Lichfields pointed out, “whilst nearly a quarter of the population will be aged over 65 in Great Britain by 2036, only 7% of Development Plans … include land allocations for housing for older people”.