A PLAN to build a 64-bed care home in a residential area of Ilkley has been rejected by councillors after local opposition, but a 38 house development in Addingham is to go ahead despite road safety worries.
A ward councillor a representative of Ilkley Civic Society were among those to speak out at a meeting of Bradford Council’s Regulatory and Appeals Committee last Thursday against the plan for a care home on the site of Wheatley Lawns, Clifton Road.
The land was previously occupied by Grade II Listed 19th Century villa, Wheatley Lawns, demolished in 2012, despite calls for some to restore it, following a devastating fire several years earlier.
Opponents claimed the care home was not suitable for the site, as a commercial development in a residential area.
Five members of the Committee voted against the plan or abstained, with just one councillor supporting officers’ recommendations to grant planning permission Councillor Adrian Naylor (Independent, Craven), who sat on the committee at the meeting, said: “The committee was very clear in its view it would rather see residential housing on that plot than lose a big plot to a single unit nursing home and have to use green belt land for the housing allocation.”
The committee also flagged up issues with the design and massing of the proposed development.
Fellow Independent, Ilkley ward councillor Anne Hawkesworth, is a regular member of the committee, but did not attend the meeting due to a conflict of interests, as she has already opposed the plan.
She welcomed the decision, but warned there may yet be an appeal lodged against it.
Another ward councillor, Martin Smith (Con, Ilkley) said: “The three story project, being on a higher ground level than the adjacent homes, will significantly be overbearing to the homes on the north of the site where the tree cover is the lightest.”
Officers recommended the approval of a 38-home housing development at The Acres, Addingham, and asked for 11 affordable homes to be a condition of granting planning approval.
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