Plans to convert a former South Cumbrian care home blighted by anti-social into homes look likely to be rejected over road safety concerns.
Councillors will decide on Tuesday whether to approve plans for 17 new homes on the site of Combe House on Walney.
Mulberry Homes has applied to Westmorland and Furness Council to transform the former care home on Central Drive.
The disused building has been a hotspot for anti-social behaviour since it was sold by Cumbria County Council in 2020. Firefighters were called last month to a deliberate blaze that disrupted a children’s birthday party.
A plan that featured 20 houses was rejected in 2022 and plans to build 17 homes were put back in June due to concerns over parking and surface water drainage provision.
Planning officers have recommended members of Barrow local area planning committee refuse the proposals again due to, what they claim, is a failure from the developer to incorporate green infrastructure and demonstrate net gain in biodiversity, as well as concerns over parking.
The local highways authority said the number and the layout of parking spaces in the plans were not fully satisfactory.
A report prepared for the meeting by the planning officer said: “The development includes insufficient off-street parking provision, which in combination with the unacceptably contrived and impractical parking arrangement, would risk undue harm and prejudice to highway safety and traffic flow conditions on the local highway network, specifically along this highly sensitive stretch of Central Drive.”
The planning officer states that the number of homes is an ‘overdevelopment’ of the site.
The report said the number of units proposed and their three and four-bedroom ‘family-house’ character profile was in direct expense of a deserved satisfactory communal residential living environment that will otherwise be dominated by cramped, problematically awkward parking regime that invites conflict to the severe detriment of the amenity of the site and its future occupants.
The site has previously been affected by anti-social behaviour with a deliberate fire reportedly started in September 2022.
The planning officer stated: “The rejuvenation of the site is a most worthwhile endeavour, especially in the face of its ongoing decline and vulnerability and the impact such has particularly on neighbouring occupants and users.”
Councillors will debate the application on Tuesday at Barrow Town Hall.
