PL/22/3141/FA REFUSED: House Change of Use

Marsham Way, Gerrards Cross - Chiltern and South Bucks, Buckinghamshire Council Planning Application

Refusal of application for change of use of a house to a children’s day nursery.

View full planning application here.

This application is clearly very contentious. There are a plethora of neighbour objections, together with those from the town council, highways regarding car parking and visibility, and environmental health with regards to noise. The application is for change of use of an existing former large detached house, which was most recently used as an assisted home for the elderly, (use Class C2) in a reasonably quiet residential neighbourhood, into a children’s day nursery (use class E), which might be used for up to 111 children, 26 full time staff and 11 part-time staff.

Children’s day nurseries are always very contentious.  Ideally, in order to facilitate the children of the locality, they should be in close proximity ie in the neighbourhood, which would be a highly sustainable location as parents could walk to nursery with their children. The reality however is that most parents will drive to drop-off, and even with staggered start times, 111 children arriving predominantly by car between the times of 8 and 10am and then being collected throughout the day is going to generate a lot of traffic. Also, with a need for outdoor play, there is bound to be a deal of noise generated by the children in the playground. This has not slipped-by the locals and the Parish Council who are vehemently against the application.  

There are several issues raised by this application which we address as follows:

• Use as Day Nursery – nice surroundings for staff and children, great location for parents, not on a busy road, plenty of drop off space, will be busy and troublesome at peak times.
• Change of use to use Class E  -  Class E is a recent addition to the planning use classes, and covers a wide range of uses, which includes shops, offices, cafes, restaurants, GPs, light industrial, creches, gyms and much more. Many of these uses are not appropriate for this location, and therefore if an approval was to be given it should be constrained to the specific use applied-for.
• Noise – very subjective, the sound of children playing is actually up-lifting, and as usage would be restricted to 7am to 7pm then in reality this is not the end of the world. The planners argue that the noise generated would reduce the amenity of the surrounding residents, difficult to argue this one.
• Design – the proposed alterations to the building are modest and inoffensive, not a reason for refusal.
• Conservation Area location – on the basis that the designs do not offend it is difficult to see how this application might affect the character of the conservation area.
• Car Parking – difficult to overcome, all of those staff need to park somewhere, and a travel plan is good but how often staff adhere to this is questionable. 

It is frustrating that when there are strong neighbour objections, that the planners cannot actually be clinical with their approach and drill-down on the real issues, rather than building the case for their planning decisions. In order to make their position more robust at appeal, the planning officer’s report refers to a series of national and local planning policies which makes their decision more robust, but are not particularly specific to this application. In summary, although most of the reasons for refusal are possible to overcome, it appears that the ones regarding traffic and noise and the up-set to the amenity of local residents are likely to be insurmountable. It would be interesting to see whether an appeal decision might be more balanced.

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