For:      Mr N Williams per Wall, James & Davies 15-23 Hagley Road Stourbridge West Midlands  DY8 1QW

To consider a planning application which has been referred to the Committee because the Northern Area Planning Sub-Committee was mindful to approve it, contrary to policy and officer recommendations.  Consideration of the application was deferred at the previous meeting for further information.

Ward: Bromyard

The Development Control Manager said that at the previous meeting the Committee had deferred consideration of the application to enable the views of the Primary Care Trust to be obtained about the proposals.  He said that a letter has been received from the Agent acting for the applicants asking for the following matters to be taken into account.

• Let there be no mistake, demographically, an increasingly ageing population is inevitable and Herefordshire (being presently the second “oldest” County) will bear more than its fair share of this growth.

• Dementia, too, is demonstrably on the increase, hence the Mayor of Hereford, Cllr Chris Chappel’s Special Charity Project reported in last week’s Times. He tells us that there are already 2,575 people suffering from Alzheimer’s in Herefordshire, set to rise by 57% by 2021.

• Diane Topham (Commissioning Manager for Mental Health) at the PCT confirms beyond any doubt (her letter of 10 August) that there is a lack of EMI beds in Herefordshire and that additional capacity “in a choice of locations is required to address this need”.

• That acknowledged need had already been identified and reinforced by your own Head of Adult and Community Services when he responded to the original consultation as follows: -

          “There are an insufficient number of care homes registered for the provision of EMI care in the County and this development if approved would provide an extremely valuable and additional resource in the Bromyard area.”

• The letter which caused last month’s deferment and which purported to represent the views of the partners of Bromyard’s Nunwell Surgery was not only a “red herring” but was actually written by one Doctor who has since retracted what he said. His only purpose in writing (see his letter of 04 September) was to ensure that the PCT had been consulted (which they had). He states that his original letter should not have been used as the reason for deferment.

• With regard to the suggestion that undue pressure would be placed on the District Nursing Service, Paul Ryan, overall Head of Commissioning for the PCT, has now responded (10 September) that “we would NOT (our emphasis) have anticipated that the development of these beds would result in significant additional demands being placed on the District Nursing Service”. This is because a Registered Nursing Home, as Paul Ryan acknowledges, would have its own fully qualified nurses on site and therefore not need to call upon the services of the local District Nurses in the first place.

• The supplemental updates to the July Meeting of the Main Planning Committee gave incorrect information about the number of beds. Emphatically, this application is for 40 new nursing beds only. The existing 30 beds at Pencombe Hall are for residential care and not EMI nursing. Furthermore, this application is no more “speculative” than any other that comes before you. As is evident, it addresses a very specific need for which provision (as the Joint Commissioning Plan 2007 states) can only be made by improving relationships with private sector providers. That Plan, to which Herefordshire Council is a partner, particularly notes “a shortage of beds for people with mental health problems”.

• Officers do not consider that there is any problem in relation to landscape, visual or design issues and there is no objection from the Council’s Transportation Department.

In view of all the above, we believe that this proposal provides an opportunity to be grasped, it does not infringe specific policies relating to Nursing Homes and is a case where a genuine and overriding need has been shown.

The Development Control Manager said that key issue was not the increasing number of elderly people in the County, or the current distribution of EMI beds, but the logic behind extending a current facility for 30 beds with a further 40 beds in a location which was remote from services and was not being done in response to an identified local need at or near the site. The Council’s own document “Growing Older in Herefordshire” (August 2007)  was referred to the Agent in earlier representations to Committee. This document concluded with the sentence “All areas of policy are emphasising that the individual is at the centre of service design and delivery, rather than them having to adjust to services”. In this case a facility would be created in a location where there was no demand and to which residents would have to be moved to, the exact opposite of the policy intention of the Council towards elderly people.  Staff and visitors would also have to travel from centres of population along narrow country lanes where there was no provision of public transport or any practical alternative to travel by private car. The appropriate place for a facility of this nature was in one of the County’s urban areas with easy access to related health facilities and where the need to travel by private transport could be minimised for staff and visitors.

Councillor B Hunt one of the Local Ward Members said that he fully supported the policies within the UDP but felt that there was scope for each case to be considered on its merits and that permission could be granted in exceptional circumstances.  He said that the proposal represented the provision of specialist nursing EMI accommodation and facilities adjacent to an established elderly care home, which was in a totally secluded countryside location.  He was of the view that the applicant and other health professionals had demonstrated an increasing need for this facility which was underprovided in Herefordshire.  He was of the view that the site was sustainable by the virtue of its self-contained nature, on-site services and the expansion of the existing skilled personnel which would be run by the existing management.  The adjoining road network was adequate to serve the low level increase in traffic and he felt that the applicant has adequately demonstrated that there were sufficient material planning considerations to outweigh arguments against it and that it therefore satisfies policies (S1.DR2.CF7) of the Herefordshire UDP 2007 and the guidance in planning policy statement ‘sustainable development in rural areas’ and the Herefordshire Community Strategy ‘care for the elderly’.  He proposed that outline planning permission be granted with all detailed matters to be reserved and any other conditions considered appropriate by the officers. 

The Head of Planning Services reiterated that the application did not satisfy the requirements of Policies S1, DR2 and CF7 of the UDP and the guidance in Planning Policy Statement 7 – Sustainable Development in Rural Areas.  It was therefore necessary for the Committee to decide if there were sufficient material planning considerations to outweigh these factors.  Having discussed all the aspects of the application, the Committee concluded that there were sufficient grounds for approval to be granted.

RESOLVED   

THAT outline planning permission be granted with all detailed matters to be reserved and any other conditions considered to be appropriate by the officers.