Tarporley care home plan to be submitted to planning bosses for third time

Feb 25 2010 by Naomi Dunning, Chester Chronicle

NEW plans to build a continuing care retirement community (CCRC) in Tarporley will be submitted to the council next week.

GB Development Solutions plans to submit two parallel planning applications to Cheshire West and Chester (CWAC) planning officers – one will be for a CCRC and the other will be for housing on the land off Heatherways in the village.

This is the third time GB Development Solutions has submitted plans for a CCRC for this site. The first plans were submitted in April 2008 for a large CCRC complex – these were withdrawn just days before they were due to go to planning committee.

Residents were so unhappy with the original proposals they formed an 150-strong action group called CARE, which produced a petition to object. Altered plans were then resubmitted in December 2008 for a 50-bedroom care home and 49 self-contained extra care units. But they were refused by the then Vale Royal Borough Council (VRBC) planning committee in March 2009.

This time the plans are for the CCRC to have 75 units, with some single-storey buildings and with a smaller footprint than the previous plans. The housing proposal includes 34 houses, of which 30% would be affordable.

Glenn Mills, director of GB Development Solutions, said: “We have listened to what the planning committee said. We understood they felt the CCRC was too large and we have responded and reduced it in size.

“The CARE action group told us that they would prefer a residential development rather than a CCRC so we have put a proposal together to also to be submitted.”

John Egan of the CARE action group said: “This appears to be essentially the same as a draft they showed us six months ago, and which we told them failed to address the concerns which led to VRBC rejecting the first proposal.”